Process Control HCHE 322

Chikava F.K

Department of Chemical and Processing Engineering

Lecture 3 – Advanced Control Systems

RATIO CONTROL

• Involves keeping constant the ratio of two or more flow rates.

• The flow rate of the “wild” or uncontrolled stream is measured and the
flowrate of the manipulated stream is changed to the two streams at a
constant ratio with each other.

Figure 1: Ratio Computation Figure 2: Flow set

• Two schemes:
o Scheme 1 – ratio of the flow rates of two streams is measured and
compared with the desired ratio. The error is fed to the controller and
the controller output is used to control the flow rate of the manipulated
stream.

Page 1 of 7
 o Scheme 2 – flowrate of the wild stream is multiplied with the desired
ratio (set externally) and this gives the desired flowrate (set point) of
the manipulated stream.
• In both cases the disturbance variable is being measured and therefore
feedforward control.
• Common examples include:
o Fuel-air ratio control in burners
o Holding a constant reflux ratio on a distillation column.
o Keeping stochiometric amounts of two reactants being fed into a
reactor.
o Purging off a fixed percentage of the stream to a unit.

CASCADE CONTROL

• It has two feedback controllers – the output of the primary (or master)
controller changing the setpoint of the secondary (or slave) controller.
• The output of the secondary goes to the valve.
• There are two purposes for cascade control:
(i) to eliminate the effects of some disturbances
(ii) to improve the dynamic performance of the control loop

Example – Distillation column reboiler to illustrate disturbance rejection effect:

• Suppose the steam supply pressure increases, the steam flow rate will
increase. With the single-loop temperature controller, no correction will be
made until the higher steam flow rate increases in the vapour boil-up and
the higher vapour rate begins to raise the temperature in Tray 5. Thus, the
whole system is disturbed by a supply-steam pressure change.

Page 2 of 7
 • With the cascade control system, the steam controller will immediately see
the increase in steam flow and will pinch back on the stream valve to return
the steam flow rate to its set point. Thus, the reboiler and the column are
only slightly affected by the steam supply-pressure disturbance.

Example – CSTR Temperature control:

Page 3 of 7
 • The reactor temperature controller in the primary controller, the jacket
temperature controller is the secondary controller.
• The reactor temperature control is isolated by the cascade system from
disturbances in cooling-water inlet temperature and supply pressure.

COMPUTED VARIABLE CONTROL

• It is used when the design-controlled variable is not directly measurable.

The variable is to be controlled from other measurements.
• For example – we want to control the mass flow rate of a gas. Controlling
the pressure drop over an orifice plate gives only an approximate mass flow
rate because gas density varies with temperature and pressure in the line.
By measuring temperature, pressure and orifice-plate pressure drop and
feeding these signals into a mass flow rate computer, the mass flow rate
can be controlled as shown.

Page 4 of 7
OVERRIDE/SELECTIVE CONTROL

• Override control is a form of multivariable control in which a manipulated

variable can be set at any point in time by one of a number of different
controlled variables.
• Selective controls involve the use of signal selectors which choose either
the lowest, median or the highest control signal from two or more signals.
• Selective controls are employed in 5 basic application areas:
o Protection of equipment
o Variable restructuring
o Auctioneering
o Redundant instrumentation
o Valve position control
• Only one of the controlled variables is controlled. If another of the
controlled variables crosses the safe limit, this takes over as the variable
that is to be controlled through a selector switch. This is achieved through
the use of a “High Selector Switch (HSS)” if the variable should not exceed
an upper limit or a “Low Selector Switch (LSS)”.
• Override/select control uses LS and HS action to change which controller
is applied to the manipulated variable.
• Override/select control uses select action to switch between the
manipulated variables using the same control objective.

Page 5 of 7
Examples

1. Hotspot temperature control.

The signal from the three TT’s is fed to the HS.

The highest T is then sent to the TC. The system
then controls the peak temperature in the reactor
wherever it is located

2. Distillation column bottoms level and temperature.

• Normally, the base level is controlled by bottoms product
withdrawal.
• Temperature in the stripping section is held by steam to the reboiler.
• In situations where the vapour boil-up is greater the liquid from tray
1, the base level will continue to drop even with the bottoms flow at
zero. If no corrective action is taken, the reboiler may boil dry which
fouls the tubes.
• The control system will perform an “override” control. The low
selector (LS) sends to the steam valve the lower of the two signals.

Page 6 of 7
Page 7 of 7