Optimal feedback synthesis and minimal time function for the bioremediation of water resources with two patches

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal control framework for bioremediation of water resources with two pumps, aiming to minimize the time to clean contaminated water using Pontryagin's principle and Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to solve a non-convex minimal-time control problem in bioremediation involving two pumps, providing explicit bounds on the value function.

Findings

Explicit optimal control strategies derived.

Bounds on the minimal time function established.

Solution methodology applicable to similar bioremediation problems.

Abstract

This paper studies the bioremediation, in minimal time, of a water resource or reservoir using a single continuous bioreactor. The bioreactor is connected to two pumps, at different locations in the reservoir, that pump polluted water and inject back sufficiently clean water with the same flow rate. This leads to a minimal-time optimal control problem where the control variables are related to the inflow rates of both pumps. We obtain a non-convex problem for which it is not possible to directly prove the existence of its solutions. We overcome this difficulty and fully solve the studied problem by applying Pontryagin's principle to the associated generalized control problem. We also obtain explicit bounds on its value function via Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman techniques.