Offset-Free Koopman Model Predictive Control of Thermal Comfort Regulation for a Variable Refrigerant Flow-Dedicated Outdoor Air System-Combined System

Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) system has been an appealing solution of air conditioning for residential and commercial buildings, due to its flexibility and cost effectiveness, while lack of ventilation capability is a major drawback. Incorporation of dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS) is a typical practice. However, good coordination between DOAS and VRF is critical for achieving desired thermal comfort is challenging due to the possible complexity of mixed sensible and latent heat exchanges. In this paper, to handle the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of VRF-DOAS system, we propose an offset-free Koopman model predictive control (MPC) strategy for thermal comfort regulation, in which the MPC design is computationally more efficient due to the convex problem formulation and the use of reduced-order Koopman models, and the offset-free MPC structure enhances the robustness to model uncertainties and unmeasured disturbances. A control-oriented model is obtained by hybridizing the first-principle and data-driven modeling approach. The proposed controls strategy is evaluated with a Modelica simulation model of a VRF-DOAS system. A Dymola-Python cosimulation platform is developed via the functional mockup interface (FMI), for which the MPC algorithms are implemented in Python. Simulation results show significantly better performance of the offset-free Koopman MPC in thermal comfort regulation.