Proceedings of the 8th

World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation

July 6-9 2010, Jinan, China

Simulation of System Identification and Decoupling

Control of Rotary Lime Kiln System *
LUO Xian-xi1.2.3

YUAN Ming-zhe1 and WANG Hong1

1.Key Laboratory of Industrial Informatics, Shenyang

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science,
Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
2.East China Institute of Technology,Nanchang ,
Jiangxi Province, China
3.Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Science,
Beijing,China
Luoxx@sia.cn

1.Key Laboratory of Industrial Informatics, Shenyang

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science,
Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
Mzyuan@sia.ac.cn

and the raw lime stone begin to discompose into CaO(active

lime) and CO2 . The temperatures of the front and the back of
the kilns are controlled by the combusting control system. The
performance of the control systems is vital to the consumption
of energy and the passing rate of active lime. A rotary lime
kiln is shown in Figure 1.

Abstract: Lime is an important smelting raw material for

iron& steel plants. Most of large and medium-scale iron& steel
enterprises have their own lime works for self-supply.
Reasonable control for the lime kiln is significant to reduce
energy consumption and improve the pass rate of lime quality. In
this paper, the model described in literature is applied to
simulate the actual operating conditions of rotary lime kiln. The
method of step response is adopted to identify the object with two
inputs (the fuel flow rate and damper position) and two outputs
(the temperatures in the front and the end of the kiln) into a first
order, strong coupling linear system model and the validity of the
model is verified as well. On the basis of the identified model, we
design a decoupling controller. The simulation results show that
the controller can accurately track the instructions to the
temperatures at the front and the end of the kiln respectively
with high stability and control accuracy. The method and
conclusions of this paper may provide reference to the design of
lime kiln combustion control system.
Index Terms- Lime Kiln, System Identification, Decoupling
control

Fig. 1 The picture of rotary lime kiln

The schematic of lime kiln is also shown in Figure 2.

There are two main manipulators: the fuel flow rate and the air
flow rate at the entrance (the right side of figure 2). The fuel
flow rate is controlled by control valve and the air flow rate is
controlled by a damper. The target of the combustion control
system is to regulate the temperatures at the front and the back
of the kiln accurately within a certain range according to the
production demands [3].

I. INTRODUCTION
Iron and steel production process consumes a lot of active
lime as a supplementary raw material. Many steel companies
have their own lime kilns to produce active lime. The
implementation of reasonable control of lime kiln will
effectively reduce energy consumption in the lime production
process, improve the passing rate of final product, and thus
improve the quality of steel, iron and steel products. It can also
improve the economic performance and reduce pollutant
emissions [1].
According to different structural characteristics, Lime kiln
can be divided into rotary lime kiln and vertical gas firing kiln
[2]
. The control systems of different kilns vary a lot. However
the overall of the control systems can be divided into feeding
materials, discharging lime, combusting, cooling, cleaning
dust, hydraulic station control sections. The object researched
in this paper is the combusting control section of the rotary
lime production process.
The rotary lime kilns in iron& steel plants are fuelled with
blast-furnace gas (BFG), coke oven gas (COG) or the mixture
of different gases [2]. The kilns are heated to high temperature
*

Fig. 2 Schematic diagram of lime kiln

Rotary kiln is important industrial equipment, and many

related modelling and optimization control methods can be
found in different literatures in China or abroad. References
[3] [4] adopted the method of neural network to set up models

This work is supported by a grant from the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program)No.2008AA042901

978-1-4244-6712-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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and described the model with S function which can run in

Matlab. Reference [5] model and optimize the system based
on testing exhausted gases concentration, such as CO.
Reference [6] established the static model of a lime kiln.
Reference [7] [8] applied hybrid control and expert system to
control lime kiln. These methods have positive meaning in
improving the quality of lime production, reducing energy
consumption. This paper studies the S-function model
established by [3], using decoupling control method so as to
achieve the closed-loop control on the temperatures of both
sides of rotary lime kiln.

(2)

T f = T _ fr T _ fr 0

(3)

Tb = T _ bk T _ bk 0

(4)
In this way, input and output variables are defined as the
increment to the physical quantity of the balance point.
B. System Identification Method
If we assume that the relationship of the four variables of
the system to be identified can be approximated as a linear
time-invariant systems near the equilibrium point, we can
describe the system with the transfer function matrix D (S).

II. ROTARY KILN SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION AND

MODEL VALIDATION

T ( s ) = D ( s )U ( s )

A. The Premise and Conditions Set for the Study

Reference [3] has given the S-function code of the model
of rotary lime kiln. This article assumes that the model can
correctly describe the Kilns actual working conditions. This
assumption is the starting point of the article. It is necessary to
explain that even if the model and the actual working
conditions are not fully fit, the presented method can also be
useful.
Because the model contains the object delay, coupling and
coupling characteristics of the actuator, it is difficult to design
a suitable controller directly from any descriptive models to
achieve control targets. Therefore, we have to approximately
identify the system into a linear system model, so the
controller to the approximate linear system can be designed
with the methods of linear systems. The problem of kiln
temperatures closed-loop control can be successfully resolved.
The S function model is treated as a black box to be
identified, as shown in Figure 3.

(5)

In the equation:

T ( s ) = (T f ( s ), Tb ( s )) T ;U ( s ) = (U 1 ( s ),U 2 ( s )) T
They denote the Laplace Transform results of the input
and output variables, respectively.

D (s)
D ( s ) = 11
D 21 ( s )

D12 ( s )

D 22 ( s )

(6)
In order to determine the transfer function matrix D (s),
we have designed two experiments.
The first experiment is to keep U2 = 0 (i.e. u2 = 0.5), U1 =
0.5u (t) (i.e. u1 step 0 to 1 at the time of 0 second). The
experimental results (simulation) are shown in Figure 4.

Fig. 3 Rotary Lime Kiln to be identified

Fig. 4 The temperature curves whenU1 (t) = 0.5u (t), U2 (t) = 0

From the figure we can see that the input variables of the
temperature control system of rotary kiln are the fuel flow rate
and the damper position. Here, u1 denotes the real fuel flow
rate relative to the percentage of full flow rate, and
u2denotes the percentage of the damper opening.
The outputs of the system are the front temperature T_fr
and the back temperature T_bk.
According to the information of production operating, the
kiln has a balance operating point, namely: When [u10, u20]
Rotary kiln
=[0.5, 0.5], [T_fr0, T_bk0] =[2225, 425].
operation is performed in the vicinity of the point. Therefore,
the linear object recognition may wish to use this point as the
reference point for the establishment of an incremental
mathematical model. Each variable is defined as:

U 1 = u1 u10

U 2 = u 2 u 20

After the simulation, the precise data of T_fr (t) and T_bk
(t) corresponding to time t can be seen in the workspace.
These data can be transformed to increment data to the
equilibrium point in accordance with equation (1) - (4) So, we
get:
Tf () = 165 (i.e. T_fr () = 2390); To reach stable 65%
of amplitude, the corresponding time is 35 seconds;
Tb () = 34 (i.e. T_bk () = 459); To reach a stable 65%
of stable amplitude, the corresponding time is 5 seconds.
The trends of the curve can be approximated with firstorder elements. In accordance with the characteristics of firstorder elements, we can derive:

D11 ( s ) =

(1)

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330
35s + 1

(7)

D21 ( s ) =

68
5s + 1

(8)
The second experiment: to maintain the input U1 (t) = 0,
U2 (t) = 0.5u (t), we can get the temperature curves shown in
Figure 5.

Fig. 7 Comparison of T_fr waveform and identified model waveform

Fig. 5 The temperature curves when U1 (t) = 0U2 (t) = 0.5u (t)

According to the above methods we can derive:

348
4.2 s + 1
280
D22 ( s ) =
3s + 1
D12 ( s ) =

(9)
(10)

Fig. 8 Comparison of T_bk waveform and identified model waveform

Till now, the transfer function matrix to express the

mathematical model (5) has been worked out..

Through the test and analysis of the t waveforms, it can

be deduced that the identified model can well reproduce the
actual model. It confirms the validity of the identified model.

C.

Model Validation
In order to verify whether the model identified out of the
original system can describe the working process, we have
designed a verification model diagram shown in Figure 6. The
results of the simulation to the model with the S function and
the identified model can be compared when they are inputted
with the same signals.

III DECOUPLING AND CONTROLLER DESIGN

From the equations (5) and (7) (8) (9) (10) , it can be seen
that there are strong coupling relationship between the two
inputs and two outputs. It is uneasy to design a suitable
controller for such an object directly. Fortunately, there is an
indirect method, which is decoupling first and later design. By
decoupling, we can divide the object into two single input and
single output (SISO) systems. Then we can design the
controllers respectively.
Suppose there are a pair of input variables, R(s)=(R1(s),
R2(s))T, and a diagonal matrix,(s)=diag(1(s), 2(s)),
furthermore:

T ( s) = ( s ) R( s)

Fig. 6 Block diagram to verify the identified model

We can take the slope signals for the test, 0.0025

increments per second for U1 and -0.025 for U2. When
changes on U1 and U2 are not more than 0.5, the comparison
of received waveform of T_fr with that of the identified model
is shown in Figure 7, and the comparison of the waveform of
T_bk is shown in Figure 8.

i.e.

T f ( s ) = 1 ( s ) R1 ( s )

Tb ( s ) = 2 ( s ) R2 ( s )

(11)
(12)

(13)
By this way, the system changes into two SISO systems.
So the controllers can be designed.
By equation (5) and (11) we can see;

D( s )U ( s ) = ( s ) R ( s )

(14)

Thus we can derive

U ( s ) = D( s ) 1 ( s ) R( s ) = P( s ) R( s ) (15)
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The input now is replaced by R (s), and we can transform

R (s) into U (s) as shown in equation (15).
So, the decoupling matrix is

The final design of the control system model block

diagram is shown in Figure 10, and its equivalent block
diagram shown in Figure 11.

P( s ) = D( s ) 1 ( s )

(16)
It should be pointed out that: a reasonable choice of(s) is
very important, because the matrix P(s) must be physically
achievable, or the degree of numerator polynomial of each
element in the matrix should not higher than that of the
numerator polynomial. Therefore, the design should take into
account of the compromise between system simplification and
realization.
Now we select proper(s)according to the actual situation
as follows:

1
35s + 1

( s) = diag

3s + 1

Fig. 10 Block diagram of control system

(17)
This just can eliminate a factor section from each
numerator of the elements in the inverse matrix of D (s).
After the final solution, we get:

P(s) =

(15365s + 6074s+ 403)

2

7
(21s+ 5)(5s+1)
36
-17 (3s+1)(21s+ 5)

360

29

(5s+1)(35s+1)
24

11
(21s+ 5)(5s+1)
48

(18)

The decoupling matrix can be described as figure 9

Fig. 11 The equivalent block diagram of control system

IV SIMULATION OF THE DECOUPLING CONTROL

SYSTEM
Suppose the instruction of the system changes from the
balanced state [2225, 425] to the target state [2225, 445] on
the 5th second, and to another target state [2245, 445] on the
100th second, we can see the results of simulation which are
shown as Figure12.

Figure 9: Decoupling Matrix Diagram

If we combine this section with Figure 6, the system

would change to having the inputs of R1 (s) and R2 (s) and the
outputs of Tf (s), Tb (s). And the system has been decoupled
into two independent sections. According to equations (12),
(13) and (17), we can see the new mathematical model of the
system can be described by formula (19):

T f ( s ) = 35s + 1 R1 ( s )

1
Tb ( s ) =
R2 ( s )
3s + 1

(19)
After decoupling, the two sections of the system both are
first-order objects. Regulators are easy to design, and we can
predict to gain a good performance system.
If we design the system into typical I-type system, all we
need are two integrators, just as shown in figure10. That
makes the system fast adjusting with no error. The parameters
k1,k2 of the integrators can either be preset or tune according
to the production demands.

Fig. 12 The simulation results of decoupling Control

We can compare the results with the PID control system

without decoupling (i.e. removing P(s) from Figure 10 and
substitute PID controller for the integrators). We can tune the
parameters of each PID carefully. However we can get no
better results than which is shown in Figure 13.

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Lime-kiln temperature control systems can be described

with a first-order, coupled two-input two-output mathematical
model.
Decoupling control method can effectively solve the
lime-kiln burning controller design problems. The simulation
results are excellent. The performance is much better than
normal PID control.
The elements in the diagonal matrix (s) should be
chosen properly. If the selection is too simple, the decoupling
matrix would be a physically unachievable one.
The accuracy of identified model has impact on the
performance of decoupling controller. So the identification
error should be limited into a certain range.
The research method and conclusions of this paper can
provide helpful reference to the combustion control system
design of rotary lime kiln.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by a grant from the National
High Technology Research and Development Program of
China (863 Program) (No.2008AA042901).

Fig. 13 simulation results of normal PID control

From the Figure 12 and the Figure13, we can get such

conclusions:
1) PID controlled system without decoupling has larger
fluctuation. It is difficult to accurately track the temperature
changes of instruction. However, the decoupling control
system can accurately track the changes in instruction. It can
achieve the target state within 1 minute. The dynamic
performance of the system is much better.
2) When the instruction of the back kiln temperature
changes, there is attenuation of oscillation, and the period of
time for the transition process is short. Its an obvious secondorder system response. The front Kiln temperature fluctuates
with small-scale amplitude and damps out quickly.
3) The response to the instruction of the back kiln
temperature is much slower. That is because this section has a
larger time constant (35 seconds) in the design. We can adjust
the parameter k1 for better performance.
4) When the back kiln temperature is regulated, the front
kiln temperature fluctuations in a small range (the period of
time from the 0 to 50th second). When the front kiln
temperature is regulated, there is no obvious change on the
back kiln temperature (from the 100th to150th second). In the
ideal decoupling control system the two should not affect each
other. It Occurs like Figure 12 because there is some error
between the real system and the identified model. However,
from the simulation results we consider the error is acceptable.

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V CONCLUSION
In this paper, rotary lime kiln and the kiln temperature
control problem has been studied. A model described by the
S-function in Matlab is treated as a black box on behalf of
real lime-kiln, and the method of step response is applied to
identify the system with two inputs and two outputs. The
mathematical model with a transfer function matrix is derived
to describe system. Based on this model, we design a
decoupling controller in accordance with decoupling control
method.
Through the previous discussion we get the following
conclusions:

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