Title: Comparison between real-time auto-tuning PID and conventional PID controller for a dairy industrial evaporation process

Authors: Qingbo Meng; Hongwei Zhang; Martin Howarth

Addresses: National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University, UK ' National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University, UK ' National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Abstract: Evaporation processes are commonly applied in the food industries to concentrate the liquor for future treatments. It presents challenges to the modelling and control approaches due to the system complexity, especially for the multi-effect evaporators. In this study, an industrial milk evaporation process is introduced and a mathematical model of a three-effect falling film evaporator is developed using MATLAB/Simulink with added disturbances. A real-time closed-loop auto-tuning PID and a conventional PID are both presented and applied to the model as the control strategies for the evaporation process. The simulation results are compared to illustrate the improvements from the auto-tuning PID controller.

Keywords: multi-effect falling-film evaporator; auto-tuning PID controller; industrial milk evaporation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIC.2022.124072

International Journal of Modelling, Identification and Control, 2022 Vol.40 No.1, pp.27 - 35

Received: 11 Mar 2021
Accepted: 21 Jul 2021
Published online: 12 Jul 2022 *

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