Controller Design for Dead Time Approximated Model of Juice Extraction Unit of Sugar Factory

Abstract

The sugar production is complex process and has several sub-processes operating altogether to produce the end product. In India, there are numerous sugar mills and have a significant contribution as far as the economy of India is concerned. At present, almost every sub-unit of a sugar factory is automated with modern control systems. However, many challenging factors are present in the process, due to which the classical and conventional control systems fail to perform very satisfactorily. One of such disturbing factor is the dead time of the process. In this paper, the juice extraction unit is considered with presence of some dead time.For controller design, the approximation of dead time is carried out using the first order Padé approximation method. Now, for the resulting model, two different controllers, PID and MPC have been established using the MATLAB. The MPC is a prediction based approach. Finally a comparative study, pertaining to the control performance, has been presented for the designed control systems.