Model predictive control of an infrared-dryer

For product quality purposes, the drying of some delicate materials is not easily realizable and requires a tight well-designed control scheme. This study presents control results for the drying of a thin fiber sheet moving through an electric infrared dryer. The drying process dynamics is described by a minimum realization linear model that is used to develop a model predictive controller (MPC) and test its performance. The results obtained indicate that the MPC multivariable controller is able to handle process interactions and produced good results for setpoint tracking of the humidity and temperature of the material exiting the dryer and for disturbance rejection of measured and unmeasured disturbances.