Robust tracking control of column froth flotation process with an unknown disturbance

Abstract

AbstractThis manuscript develops a robust output regulator for the column froth flotation process in the presence of unknown disturbance. In particular, motivated by relevant physical modeling setting, all information (including magnitude, phase, bias, and frequency) of the disturbance is unavailable. The system considered is consisting of froth and collection zones and is governed by a set of conservative heterodirectional transport hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs). Moreover, the transport related time delay between the froth and the collection region is considered, and is associated with the boundary conditions of the PDEs. The velocity of the feed is considered the input and the concentration of the solid particle with air phase at the top of froth region as the output. We propose a disturbance frequency identifier and formulate a robust controller according to the internal model principle such that the output tracks the desired concentration despite the model uncertainties and unknown disturbance.