IJSART - Volume 1

Issue 5 MAY 2015

ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

Outlet Temperature Control of Superheated Steam

using Intelligent Controller and Advanced Controller
S.Kaaviya 1, V.Radhika2
1,2

Department of Control and Instrumentation Engineering

1,2
Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College

Abstract- Superheaters and desuperheaters in combination

are present in boilers of power plant and paper pulp
industries. The steam from the boiler is sent to turbine for
power generation, this steam is supercritical steam and this is
to be superheated and desuperheated simultaneously before
being sent to the turbine. The precision control of superheated
steam fed to turbines for the generation of electrical power
has been a challenging task for control engineers for a long
time. There are several limitations that are associated with
conventional control philosophies used for this purpose. The
modern control techniques namely conventional and advanced
controllers are being preferred due to their inherent merits
over the conventional control techniques in this work and
results are compared. In this work, an attempt has been made
to design fuzzy logic based PID controller and Model
Predictive Control for superheater temperature control of a
boiler. The PID controllers based on are also
designed.Standard SIMULINK Software is used on MATLAB
platform to get the results.
Keywords- Superheated steam, Intelligent techniques, PID
controller, Ziegler-Nichols tuning,Fuzzy Adaptive PI, Model
Predictive Controller.

I. INTRODUCTION
A boiler or a steam generating unit is an integral part
of any electric utility plant. It requires a source of heat at a
sufficient temperature level to produce steam. In generating
electric power with a turbo generator, it is much more efficient
to use steam that has been superheated and reheated as is done
in the typical electric utility plant. The general practice with
the industrial boiler is to use saturated steam or only a small
amount of superheat unless the electric power is being
generated in the industrial plant. A turbine generally
transforms the heat of superheat into work without forming
moisture. The heat of superheat is all recoverable in the
turbine. A variation in the steam temperature, pressure, etc.,
may cause unequal expansion and contraction in the turbine
parts. Rapid and excessive changes in temperature can result
in damage to the turbine. Steam temperatures that are
significantly higher than the design temperature can shorten
the life of the turbine metal parts. Such temperature variations
also cause a change in the unit electrical generation.
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A supercritical steam generating unit is the one which

operates at a pressure above the critical pressure of 3208 psia.
When water at a supercritical pressure is heated, it does not
boil and does not produce a two-phase mixture of water and
steam. Instead, the fluid undergoes a transition in the enthalpy
range of approximately 850 to 1050 btu/lb. At the boiler's inlet
the high pressure feed water is forced into the boiler tubes. It
is heated as it passes through them and finally is ejected from
the boiler's main outlet (secondary superheater outlet) as a
main steam.
Superheater outlet temperature from boiler to the
turbo generating unit is to controlled accurately due to the non
linear time varying behavior of the system. Process modeling
difficulties and lack of suitable measurements of plant
dynamics make most conventional control techniques
unsuitable and manual control imperative. By manual control
the overall process objectives quality and quantity of
superheated steam produced is left in the hands of a human
operator.
In the past few years there has been a tremendous
increase in the popularity of PID controllers. The test of the
evolution of the PID is that, actually most of the classical
industrial controllers have procedure to automate its
parameters. Then, if we can get a good model of the process,
given by analytic linear equation, direct technique of control
are the simplest and less cost alternatives. The classical PID
controller provides an accurate and efficient solution to linear
control problems. But the involved process are in general
complex, time variant, with delays and non-linearitys and
very often, with a poorly defined dynamics. When the
processes are too complex to be described by analytic models,
they are hardly controlled by drastic approaches that simplifies
them but do not get the required efficiency. To circumvent,
some of these problems, modern control techniques have
emerged for their applications in power systems.
Considering these difficulties incorporating human
intelligence ino the controller would be a simple and efficient
soltion and this lead to the development of fuzzy logic
controllers. Fuzzy logic controllers provide robust control
inspite of measurement inaccuracies. This feature provides a
reasonable tolerance for prediction in dead time process. In
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IJSART - Volume 1

Issue 5 MAY 2015

ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

this approach a fuzzy controller with a simple prediction

algorithm to compensate for inherent transportation lag of
superheater.
Model Predictive Control also known as receding
horizon control, is an advanced strategy for optimizing the
performance of multivariable control systems. MPC generates
control actions by optimizing an objective function repeatedly
over a finite moving prediction horizon, within system
constraints, and based on a model of the dynamic system to be
controlled.

Let

Cp (

Where

h
)p
T

Cv (

h h T

t T t

u
)v
T
(1)

Mass balance equation :

d
( sVshp ) q s q sh
dT

(2)

Mass change is negligible since steam temperature is over

Thus traditional PI algorithm doesnt hold good for
such systems which has disturbances by nature. A new
algorithm that can deal with these limitations has to be
considered. The fuzzy controller is a non-linear controller and
the fuzzy control algorithm is based on the intuition and
experience about the plant to be controlled. Therefore it
doesnt rely on the precise mathematical modeling. Similarly
advanced control strategy of Model Predictive Control also
shows optimum performance.

saturated temperature.
Energy balance equation :

d
( sVs hs mC p T ) Qc q s (hs hshp )
dt

(3)

d s
dh
d
(ma C p Ta ) hsVs
sVs s Qc q s (hs hshp )
dt
dt
dt
(4)

dh h dT
dT

Cp
dt T dt
dt

II. MODELLING OF SUPERHEATER

AND DESUPERHEATER

(5)

The system considered here is Superheater and

Desuperheater system. The outlet steam temperature from the
recovery boiler is to be maintained by superheating
desuperheating it simultaneously.

At steady state metal temperature is close to steam

temperature.

A. SUPERHEATER MODEL

d s
dT
d
(ma C p Ta ) hsVs
sVs C p out Qc q s C p (Tin To
dt
dt
dt

For modeling the superheater parts, it should be noted

that only the steam phase is presented in these subsystems.
Also, in once-through boilers, the pressure change is only a
function of the feedwater flow rate.

(6)

d
(ma C p Ta ) f (min )
dt

(7)

function of mass flowrate.

V

Volume( m )

Specific Density( kg / m )

Specific enthalpy(KJ/kg)

Heat transfer (MJ)

Temperature

(deg Celsius)
Q

Mass flow rate

Mass(Kg)

Calorific value

Page | 133

This approximation is good enough to fit model response with

experimental data.

f (min ) k a min
dTout
k
1
1

Q
min (Tin Tout a ) k 0
dt
sV s C p
sV s
Cp

k2

1
sV s

k1

H
Cp

B1

ka
Cp

B2 k o s V s

(8)

Q Hm f u e l

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IJSART - Volume 1

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dTout
k 2 (k1 m fuel min (Tin Tout B1 ) B2 )
Cp

(9)

Substituting the values and applying laplase transform transfer

function is obtained.

1.3882
s 0.0526

The inputs to to the fuzzy controller are two,

including the error and derivative of error. The output of the
controller are Kp and Ki values which are fed to the variable
PI block designed The output of the variable PI is fed to the
plant transfer function designed.

(10)

No. of Inputs:2 (error, derivative of error)

No. of Outputs:2(Kp,Ki)
No. of rules:25

B. DESUPERHEATER MODEL
Membership function for error, derivative error , Kp and Ki : 5
The response of outlet temperature to the changes in
spray water is instantaneous. Hence, there is no dynamics
involved the coefficient connecting the spray change to
change in outlet temperature at 100% load has been derived.
The overall steady state coefficient for control valve and
desuperheater is found to be 0.556 relating the change at the
superheated outlet temperature to the change in the controller
design. Therefore the transfer function for spray valve
coefficient is obtained as,

0.556
1

(11)

Fig.1 : Rule viewer of Ki

III.CONTROLLER DESIGN
A. PID CONTROLLER:
The PID controller is commonly used to control any
parameters in process industries. The PID controller consists
of proportional, integral and derivative term. The proportional
term changes the controller output proportional to the current
error value. Large values of proportional term make the
system unstable. The Integral term changes the controller
output based on the past values of error. So, the controller
attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the controller
output. .The derivative term is used in slow processes. So, the
controller attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the
controller output. The PID gain values are calculated by using
the Ziegler-Nichols first tuning algorithm.
B. FUZZY ADAPTIVE PI
The controller works on the basics of PI tunning. As
mentioned earlier the fuzzy adaptive is used to tune the Kp
and Ki values of the PI controller. The controller fis file
include the number of inputs and number of outputs and the
fuzzy inference engine to be used. Depending on the input
values of different values the output values are decided based
on the rules framed.

Page | 134

Fig.2 : Rule viewer for Kp

C. MPC CONTROLLER
Model Predictive Control, MPC, usually contains the
following three ideas,
1. Explicit use of a model to predict the process output along a
future time horizon.
2. Calculation of a control sequence to optimize a performance
index.
3. A receding horizon strategy, so that at each instant the
horizon is moved towards the Future, which involves the
application of the first control signal of the sequence
Calculated at each step.
1.

mo-measured output is the output from superheater

2.

ref-reference is the temperature of steam to be

maintained.
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3.

Issue 5 MAY 2015

ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

mv-measured variable from controller is fed to

desuperheater for maintaining the temperature.

6000

5000

4000

temp(degc)

IV.RESULTS

3000

2000

2000

1800

1000
1600

1400

0
0

temp(degC)

1200

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

Time(sec)

1000

800

Fig.8 : Response of Fuzzy controller of superheaterII

600

400

200

0
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

V. CONCLUSION

3000

Fig.3 : Response of PID controller of superheater I

4

x 10
2

1.5

temp(degC)

0.5

-0.5

-1
0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

Time(sec)

Fig.4 : Response of PID controller of superheaterII

700

The continuous process of superheating and

desuperheating is a tedious process. The transfer function is
obtained by deriving the mathematical model and substituting
the parameters of the plant. Then PID controller is
implemented using first tunning method. Then fuzzy adaptive
PI is implemented which has an advantage of less peak
overshoot in comparison with the
conventional PID
controller. Then adavanced control stratergy MPC is
implemented which shows an advantage of fast settling in
comparison to PID controller.

600

VI. FUTURE SCOPE

500

temp(degc)

400

300

200

100

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Time(sec)

Fig.5 : Response of MPC controller of superheaterI

The control is implemented for outlet temperature of

two superheaters using their respective desuperheaters
similary the third superheater. Then optimisation can be
incorporated for better performance.

600

REFERENCES
500

temp(deg)

400

300

200

100

0
0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Time(sec)

Fig.6 : Response of MPC controller of superheaterII

6000

5000

temp(degC)

4000

[1] Mohan.k, Arun.L.R and Guruprasad.B.S,( June 2013)

Nonlinear analysis and fatigue life estimation of
attemperator using fe based approach, International
Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering
and Technology, Vol. 2, Issue 6.
[2] Ghaffari, A. Chaibakhsh, and S. Shahhoseini ,( October
2012) , Neuro-Fuzzy Modeling of Heat Recovery Steam
Generator, International Journal of Machine Learning
and Computing, Vol. 2, No. 5.

3000

2000

1000

0
0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

Time(sec)

Fig.7 : Response of Fuzzy controller of superheater I

[3] Ade Haryanto, Arjon Turnip, and Keum-Shik Hong,(

2009) Parameter dentification of a Superheater Boiler
System Based on Wiener-Hammerstein Model using
Maximum Likelihood Method , Proceedings of the 7th
Asian Control Conference.
[4] Ali Chaibakhsh , Ali Ghaffari, S. Ali A. Moosavian
,(2007), A simulated model for a once-through boiler by

Page | 135

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IJSART - Volume 1

Issue 5 MAY 2015

ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

parameter adjustment based on genetic algorithms

ELSEVIER, pp: 1029-1051.
[5] S.R.Vaishnav, Z.J.Khan, (October 24-26, 2007) , Design
and Performance of PID and Fuzzy Logic Controller with
Smaller Rule Set for Higher Order System,WCECS
2007.

Page | 136

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