Model Order Reduction of a Higher Order Model of pH Neutralizer of Sugar Mill

Several industrial chemical processes are found tobe FOPDT (first order plus dead time). The presence of deadtime makes the transfer function to be irrational and makesthe simulation and controller design very complex. In thepresent work an FOPDT model of the pH neutralizationprocess which is found in sugar mills is considered as a subjectof study and analysis. Having obtained its Padéapproximation, its order has been reduced using Square RootBalance Truncation Method and then for this reduced ordermodel, Ziegler-Nichols(ZN), Internal model control (IMC)and optimized IMC using Genetic Algorithm(GA-IMC)based controllers are designed and their performance is compared.