Advanced control schemes for temperature regulation of air heat plant

The exit-air temperature control of an air heat plant (AHP) is an important aspect in a drying process. The paper presents four control schemes designed using advanced techniques for regulating the temperature of the AHP. An experimental set-up of the AHP is fabricated. Using experimental results a reduced order mathematical model is developed. With this model four control schemes namely, PID, fuzzy logic control (FLC), fuzzy logic control using genetic algorithms (FLC-GA) and neuro fuzzy control (NFC) are developed and presented. All these schemes are evaluated with respect to set-point tracking using performance indices. The merits and limitations of each scheme have been brought out. Use of advanced techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and GA in the conventional FLC offers encouraging advantages. The superiority of FLC over PID, FLC-GA over FLC and NFC over other schemes is highlighted.