Fractional PID controller applied to a chemical plant with level and pH control

Abstract

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.One of the most important processes in the chemical, biological and petrochemical industries is the control of the potential of hydrogen (pH). As it is a multivariable process and non-linear, pH control gives rise to many challenges for designers in both dynamic responses and robustness issues. Despite all this complexity, in many circumstances pH control is performed by using a conventional proportional integral derivative (PID) control, which is very common in industry. This paper proposes using a fractional-order PID to improve the pH control performance of a lab-scale process, as it is more flexible, i. e., there is a higher number of variables to be adjusted. Results from a simulation have been compared to those from both conventional and fractional-order PID controls, which has shown the better performance of the latter related to important metrics such as the control effort and dynamic response of the controlled variables.