Comparison the modern controllers’ efficiency for the spray dryer’s control system

Abstract

Spray drying is one of the widely used drying process in chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industry. This process allows removing water from the product, which is produced in the solution form, and turn the finished product into a flowing powder material. It is obvious that such a process requires a significant amount of thermal energy, which is spent on the water evaporation. In addition, as in any drying process, in spray drying there is a problem with possible material over-drying. Therefore, the task of qualitative regulation of the spray drying process remains relevant. In this article, we attempt to compare the efficiency of two modern controllers for controlling the spray drying process. This is known in the theory of control of dynamic objects using predictive models model predictive controller and a fuzzy controller based on linguistic variables. The regulators choice due to both their popularity and high control quality indicators, which are given in published scientific works. The study was performed on based on spray drying process models, which were obtained in the previous work of the authors. In the research we used the software package MATLAB Simulink for control systems simulation. The research result show, that using the MPС-controller in the spray dryer’s control system allow to reduce the transient processes time. However, in case of a fuzzy controller, the control system partially levelling the mathematical model’s inaccuracy.