Industrial Boiler-turbine-generator Process Control Using State Dependent Riccati Equation Technique

In this paper, to control the drum pressure, the generated power, and the fluid density in the industrial boiler-turbine-generator unit a tracking controller is designed. Due to the nonlinear model of this process and some constraints in its inputs, the proposed controller is designed based on the State Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) method which is a powerful approach in this area. In this system, that is a multiple inputs, multiple outputs (MIMO) system, three control valves (CV) - the fuel CV, the feed water CV, and the steam flow CV - are used as the actuators of the system in order to control three outputs of the system - the drum pressure, the generated power, and the fluid density - respectively. To evaluate the designed controller, it is applied to the system and the performance of the system is assessed for several operating points. The simulation results demonstrate that by means of the designed controller the system has a very good performance.