  This paper deals with the analysis and synthesis of a model predictive
control (MPC) strategy used in connection with level control in conically
shaped industrial liquid storage tanks. The MPC is based on a dynamical
non-linear model describing the changes of the liquid level with respect to
changes in the inlet flow of the liquid. An Euler discretization of the
dynamical system is exploited to transform the continuous time dynamics to its
discrete time counterpart, used in the non-linear MPC (NMPC) synthesis. By
means of a simulation case study will be shown, that NMPC better tracks the
changes of the liquid level, hence provides increased control performance. This
paper also compares the traditional approach of optimal control, the linear
MPC, with the NMPC strategy.
