Monitoring and Control of Pressure in a Gas Plant via PID plus Feedforward Controller

• Main Author: Sulaiman, Ezyan Hanis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/3260/1/0001.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/3260/

This project is about the development of a controller for a process using well-established advanced process control (APC) algorithm; mainly PID and Feedforward controls. This work focuses on a model of a process that would be used for investigation of the effectiveness of several control strategies towards effective control in overcoming disturbances in the plant. The controller is observed to see how well a variable can be manipulated and controlled in real-time implementation. However, it is well known that the performances of these controllers much depend on the appropriate implementation of additional functionalities such as anti-windup and feedforward, for example, in addition to the tuning of PID parameters. The process targeted is a gas process and it mainly focused on pressure and flow control of a gaseous pilot plant. To execute the overall simulation, the controller is built on MATLAB/Simulink/LabVIEW which is a technical computing program that has easily adaptable structure where control strategies and model variables can be modified. It is shown in the results of simulation and performance analysis of both controller and process that the PID plus Feedforward control could substantially improve control performance with implementation of a model error. The PID controller provides the needed reaction to the process variable to reach steady state during setpoint changes and disturbances while the feedforward element manages to fully eliminate the effects of disturbance injection without causing too much disruption to the process response.