Modelling and control of natural convection in canned foods

In this paper we study mathematically an industrial problemrelated to sterilization processes involving heat transfer bynatural convection. We give results of existence and regularityfor the solution of this problem. We recast the whole problemas an optimal control problem with pointwise constraints onthe state and the control in order to ensure the reduction ofmicroorganism concentration and the retention of nutrients,and to save energy. Finally, we give results on existence ofthe optimal solution and optimality conditions for its characterization.     

Mathematical analysis of the optimal location of wastewater outfalls

In this work we deal with the design of wastewater treatmentsystems, mainly the optimal placement of underwater outfalls.This problem can be formulated as a state constrained optimalcontrol problem where the control is the position of the outfalls,the cost function is the sum of the distances to the wastewaterfarms and the state equations are those modelling dissolvedoxygen and biochemical oxygen demand concentrations. We discretizethe problem by means of a characteristic Galerkin method andwe propose an interior point algorithm for the numerical resolutionof the discretized optimization problem.