Identification and Control of a Heat Exchanger

Heat exchangers are utilized in various industrial applications such as power generation, petroleum refinery, coal plants, etc. It is essential to model and control these applications to meet the desired outputs. This paper takes the experimental values of the heat exchanger, uses system identification techniques to model it, and then develops control schemes to control the same. Initially, conventional feedback control is developed. A feedforward algorithm is then added to regulate the external disturbances. Subsequently, the advanced control algorithms such as Internal Model Control and Linear Quadratic Gaussian are implemented. The control starts from developing a simple Feedback control, then adding a feedforward controller to regulate the external disturbances and then advancing to Internal Model Control and finally a Linear Quadratic Gaussian control. The responses, namely: servo responses (reference tracking), regulatory responses (input and output rejections), noise rejection responses, robust responses, and sudden step test responses, are compared for all the mentioned control schemes. Finally, the paper compares the four algorithms and gives an insight into each of their characteristics.