An investigation on the efficacy of classical tuning algorithm to satisfy advanced requirements: control of main steam pressure during fuel switching and load disturbances in coal fired boilers

Abstract The direct application of classical tuning methods in determining the PID controller parameters warrants the determination of the intercept values in X-axis (designated as “L”) and Y-axis (designated as “a”) from the open loop step response of the output (to be controlled) with respect to input signal (to be regulated). However, for complex processes, the above procedure seemed to be cumbersome and as an alternative step the researchers usually opted for the heuristic algorithms for the determination of PID controller parameters. In this paper, the authors have identified the boiler demand signal as the input signal to be regulated to control the steam pressure of utility steam generators and derived the PID controller parameters using classical tuning algorithms. Further, it has been demonstrated that with the use of these controller parameters, the transient responses obtained during fuel switching as well as load disturbances are much better than the earlier published results.