Genetic Adaptive Control for Drum Level of a Power Plant Boiler

Adaptive control strategy is proposed to regulate the drum-level of a power plant boiler. Based on the three-element feedwater control system, recursive least squares method is used to identify the plant parameters and then genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to adjust the parameters of the controller. MATLAB simulation investigation indicates that, compared to the parameter-fixed PID system, GA-self-tuned system is able to reject endogenous and exogenous disturbances more effectively and rapidly, thus has better self-adaptation capability and robustness.