Ph.D student Sverre Støren

Status

I started my Ph.D. studies in 1991 and will finish my doctoral degree in 1996. My doctoral work is financed by the PROMIA project, and my advisor is Prof. Terje Hertzberg.

Research area

In 1995 I had leave from my doctoral studies while working as coordinator of the Process Integration Program, a part of the Nordic Energy Research Program. I work on dynamic simulation and optimization, mainly on an algorithmic level. Despite my leave last year, I finished a work on use of a dynamic counterpart of SQP, and a work on estimation of sensitivities of DAE systems. The last work is based on using perturbations. A special code was developed which reuses the steplegths, Jacobians etc. generated in the nominal trajectory in the N perturbed trajectories. N is number of parameters w.r.t. which the sensitivities are needed. This has two benefits, firstly the calculation time is reduced, and secondly, the accuracy is increased. The accuracy inprovement was not very evident in our results, but the calculations were significantly accelerated (by a factor 5 for flash system).

This work is presently continued by exploiting local thermodynamical models, a method I have earlier looked into in connection to dynamic simulation. Its potential in dynamic optimization is now investigated.

Activities

• Co-arranger of the PROST industrial seminar on the use of dynamic simulation a.e. in Norway, November 1995.
• Co-arranger of a seminar on the use of prosess integration in the nordic countries, November 1995.
• Held a course for lecturerers in mathematics in the engineering colleges in Sarpsborg, December 1995.
• Arranged a EEU course within dynamic optimization together with my supervisor Terje Hertzberg and my office mate Haavard I. Moe. I was administratively responsible.
• Co-advisor on the diploma work done by Ingvild Løevik on dynamic optimization of a distillation column.
• Co-advisor on the project work on dynamic modeling and simulation of a distributed reactor-regenerator system.

Publications

• Støren, S. T. Hertzberg (1994), `The sequaential linear quadratic programming algorithm for solving dynamic optimization problems - a review', Proc. ESCAPE-5, Bled, Slovenia

Plans for 1996

• Finish my Ph.D. Get a job.