Control for the Centrifugal Pump in the Simulation Platform of Power Plants

Pumps are widely used in many fields such as industries or agriculture for its convenient power supply. The centrifugal pump, as one of the most common pumps, is getting more and more attention especially in power plants. It is mainly used to provide pressure for water cycling in the primary, secondary and other loops. In the primary water loop, the rotational speed of the pump is manipulated to change the pressure of the entire pipeline system, thus the flow rate could be adjusted to regulate the output power of the plant under certain conditions. In this paper, the mathematical model of the centrifugal pump is introduced. Also simulation models of the primary loop of thermal power stations are built in the Simulink environment. In the simulation, an electric heater is used to mimic the reactor or drum in the thermal power plant. A Fuzzy PID controller is designed to control the input speed of the pump. Numerical simulations show the efficiency and robustness of the proposed controller.