Design of a Model Based Predictive Control (MPC) Strategy for a Desalination Plant in a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) Environment

The desalination process using the reverse osmosis technique is important for the production of drinking water, but its control is a great challenge due to its nonlinear and multivariable nature. In academia, the implementation of physical industrial processes represents a considerable cost, taking this into account, in recent years the technology has evolved and boomed called the “metaverse”, where it is proposed to create a virtual representation of reality. This research work proposes a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environment which consists of a virtual reverse osmosis industrial process and designs and implements the control algorithm in a programmable logic controller (PLC), which is common in the industry. The system is versatile to implement different control algorithms and opens the door to the use of different control devices for its implementation. The design methodology to be used consists of three sections. The first section is the mathematical model of the industrial process. The second section is the implementation of the virtual process in Unity3D software. The third section is the implementation of two control strategies: Proportional Integral Derivative Control (PID) and Model-Based Predictive Control (MPC). Finally, a comparison of the performance of the implemented controllers for both the permeate flow variable ( $$F$$ ) and conductivity ( $$C$$ ), in transient and steady state, is performed.