Experimental verification of model-based fuzzy gain scheduling technique

Model-based fuzzy gain scheduling (MFGS) was applied to PID controllers to control a laboratory-scale water-gas shift (WGS) reactor. The experimental results were compared with those obtained by standard fuzzy gain scheduling (FGS) with PID, conventional PID gain scheduling (GS), simple PID and a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) strategies. The MFGS technique performed comparable to the NMPC method. It exhibited excellent control behavior over the desired operating space, which spanned a wide temperature range. The other three PID-based techniques were adequate only within a limited range of the same operating space. Due to the simple algorithm involved, the MFGS technique provides a low cost alternative to other computationally intensive control algorithms such as NMPC.