A Controller Synthesis Method to Achieve Independent Reference Tracking Performance and Disturbance Rejection...

Area of Science:

• Control Engineering
• Process Control
• Power Plant Automation

Background:

• Traditional and advanced control strategies struggle to eliminate conflicts between input-output and disturbance-output responses without accurate process models.
• The unavailability of precise process models challenges engineers in coal-fired power plants, compromising reference tracking and disturbance rejection.
• Existing methods often involve trade-offs between achieving desired reference tracking and effective disturbance rejection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel two-degree-of-freedom controller, the feedforward compensated (FC) desired dynamic equation (DDE) proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller.
• To address the inherent conflict between reference tracking and disturbance rejection in systems with unavailable process models.
• To provide a practical and effective control solution for coal-fired power plants.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel two-degree-of-freedom controller: FC-DDE PID.
• Independent design for reference tracking and disturbance rejection performance.
• Validation through simulations, experiments, and field tests on coal-fired power plants.

Main Results:

• The proposed FC-DDE PID controller achieves independent reference tracking and disturbance rejection performance.
• Demonstrated effectiveness in simulations, experiments, and field tests.
• The controller exhibits a simple structure and straightforward tuning procedure.

Conclusions:

• The FC-DDE PID controller is a viable alternative for controlling coal-fired power plants, especially when accurate process models are unavailable.
• It offers a convenient and effective solution for balancing reference tracking and disturbance rejection.
• The controller is readily implementable on distributed control systems (DCS).