Real-time control of a water-gas shift reactor by a model-based fuzzy gain scheduling technique

Abstract A model-based fuzzy gain scheduling technique is proposed. Fuzzy gain scheduling is a form of variable gain scheduling which involves implementing several linear controllers over a partitioned process space. A higher-level rule-based controller determines which local controller is executed. Unlike conventional gain scheduling, a controller with fuzzy gain scheduling uses fuzzy logic to dynamically interpolate controller parameters near region boundaries based on known local controller parameters. Model-based fuzzy gain scheduling (MFGS) was applied to PID controllers to control a laboratory-scale water-gas shift reactor. The experimental results were compared with those obtained by PID with standard fuzzy gain scheduling, PID with conventional gain scheduling, simple PID and a nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) strategy. The MFGS technique performed comparably to the NMPC method. It exhibited excellent control behaviour over the desired operating space, which spanned a wide temperature range. The other three PID-based techniques were adequate only within a limited range of the same operating space. Due to the simple algorithm involved, the MFGS technique provides a low cost alternative to other computationally intensive control algorithms such as NMPC.