Heating-up control with delay-free output prediction for industrial jacketed reactors based on step response...

To improve the heating-up control performance for industrial jacketed reactors typically involved with long input delay, a predictor-based two-degree-of-freedom (2DOF) control scheme is proposed for the heating-up process operation, based on model identification from a practical step response test. By performing a simple step test (i.e., turning on the electrical heater with certain power (e.g., 50% or 100% of the heating power) to observe the heating-up temperature response), a transfer function identification method is developed to establish an integrating type process model with time delay for describing fundamental dynamics of the heating-up response. Based on the identified model, a predictor-based 2DOF control structure is established, where the delay-free output prediction is obtained by constructing two filters. The 2DOF controllers are analytically derived by proposing the desired transfer functions for the set-point tracking and load disturbance rejection, respectively. There is a single adjustable parameter in each controller (or filter), which may be monotonically tuned to obtain the desired control (or prediction) performance. Illustrative examples from the existing references and a practical application to a 4-liter jacketed reactor for pharmaceutical crystallization are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and advantage of the proposed identification and control methods in comparison with the existing methods.