Modeling and temperature control of a glass furnace with preheated air using a gas turbine

The aim of this paper is to model and control a combined heat and power (CHP) system. The system is composed by a turbo-generator and a batch tank in a glass factory. The temperature of the furnace is to be controlled in order to produce quality glass. In a turbo-generator system a large amount of energy is wasted as thermal energy at the exhaust. Therefore, use of combined heat and power (CHP) systems is highly under attention. Since the hot exhaust gas has emissions which have a bad effect on the quality of molten glass, therefore, the hot exhaust must be used indirectly in melting glass process. Therefore, a rotary regenerator is proposed to transfer gas turbine exhaust heat to the inlet air of the glass melting furnace. It is assumed that the turbogenerator is operated at full load condition and gas turbine exhaust is directed into rotary regenerator to transfer gas turbine exhaust heat to inlet air of glass furnace. The designed controller is responsible for adjusting the fuel and inlet air to the furnace. A conventional controller, namely, PID controller is proposed in this paper. The simulation results depict the capabilities of the proposed controller in different working states.