Robust flow controller design and analysis for a chemical process

Abstract

A large number of applications in industrial domains are concerned to slow processes, including flow, pressure, temperature and level control. Synthesis and control of such applications in the presence of uncertainty have been studied by many authors in recent decades. In this paper, a robust flow controller has been designed using H∞ techniques to define and regulate the flow of pipe. The most robust method is synthesized using a state-space approach by taking into account the structured (parametric) perturbations in the plant coefficients. The proposed approach ensures internal stability, satisfying both frequency and time domain requirements, and obtaining minimal performance H∞-norm of the closed-loop system. The simulations are carried out using MATLAB and the results are compared with the classical PID, linear–quadratic–Gaussian and H2 methods, and they indicate that the overall system output performance can be improved using the proposed H∞ robust controller.

Temperature and concentration control of exothermic chemical processes in continuous stirred tank reactors

“…Optimal linear control techniques have also been developed to guarantee stability of continuous stirred tank reactors based on linearization. A rigorous robust design methodology with H 2 and H ∞ performance for linear and nonlinear CSTR models has been presented in Guay et al (2005), Komari Alaei and Yazdizadeh (2014) and Vasičkaninová et al (2015). Model predictive control (Mayne, 2014; Oravec and Bakošová, 2015) has also received considerable attention by the process control research community.…”