Model Reference Adaptive Control of an Industrial Phosphate Drying Furnace

Abstract

This paper presents experimental result of a model reference adaptive control algorithm with independent tracking and regulation objectives presented in (Landau, Lozano, 1981) to the control of a phosphate drying process at the Beni-Idir Factory of the OCP (Office Chérifien des Phosphates - Maroc).The main control objective is to keep the moisture content of dried phosphate at a prescribed value (1,5%), independently of external perturbations acting on the drying process.The plant dynamic characteristics vary under the effect of variations of the input material characteristics such as the phosphate nature and humidity that vary from one layer to another.The implementation of the adaptive algorithm was based on a reduced order plant model previousely checked and uses a small size minicomputer.An energy saving close to 4,5% and ten times reduction of the variance of the output humidity error with respect to the desired one were obtained. This led to the motivation of introducing an advanced computer control in Moroccan Phosphate Industry.