Modeling and identification of experimental drum type steam boiler

Developing mathematical model for a process is an important and integral step in control system design process. Mathematical models can be developed from fundamental physical laws (white-box approach), by performing experiments (black-box approach) or a combination of both (gray-box approach). This paper presents a black-box system identification of a laboratory boiler. A mathematical MIMO model matrix which describes the dynamic behavior of the drum level and drum pressure of lab-boiler setup with respect to steam and feed water as manipulated variables is presented. A complete system identification of lab-boiler setup, designed by these researchers, has been carried out based on the design-of-experiments (DoE) and validated model with the field measurements. In this paper, the identified boiler-model is characterized in the form of 2×2 process transfer function model matrix structure. This 2×2 model matrix defines the dynamics describing the effect of changes in the feed-water flow rate and steam-flow rate, on the boiler drum-level and drum-pressure. This model can be used to study various classical and advanced control-design and analysis through this lab boiler setup.