Temperature control of shell and tube heat exchanger system using internal model controllers

In many industrial processes and operations heat exchangers are one of the simplest and important unit for the transfer of thermal energy. There are different types of heat exchangers used in industries; the Shell and Tube heat exchanger system being the most common since it can sustain wide range of temperature and pressure. The main purpose of heat exchanger is to maintain specific temperature conditions, which is achieved by controlling the exit temperature of the process fluid in response to variations of the operating conditions. In this paper, Model based control technique is employed; Internal Model Controller (IMC) combined with disturbance rejection function and Internal Model based Proportional-Integral-Derivative(PID) controller combined with feed-forward controllers are used to regulate the temperature of outlet fluid of Shell and Tube heat exchanger system to overcome the disturbance occurred due to deviation in the input fluid flow. Simulations are done in the MatLab/Simulink environment.