THE COPPERBELT UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF MINES AND MINERAL SCIENCES

CHEMICAL ENGINERING DEPARTMENT

CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT

Assignment 1: Part 3

CE 560/ MT 580: Process control

Investigation of the effect of process time constant and tuning parameters on a

proportional-integral-controlled mixing process

Due date: 29th June 2022 before 17:00 hrs

1.0 Problem description
The proportional-integral-controlled mixing process, is shown in the Fig. 1.0. The process is
initially operating at steady state with the operating conditions as shown in Table 1.

Control valve
Mixture of A and B Pure A

X1 X2=1
w1 w2

X
w

Figure 1 Integral-controlled mixing process

Table 1 Steady state operating conditions and process parameters for the mixing process

operating conditions

Stream 1 composition 0.3 kg A/kg mix.

Stream 2 composition 1.0 kg A/kg (Pure A)

Stream 1 flow rate 10 kg/min

Stream 2 flow rate 5 kg/min

Process parameters

Volume of liq. in tank 4 m3

liquid density in the tank 900 kg/m3

During operation, some process varibles (disturbances) may change and affect operation of the
missing tank. Two of such variables are the composition and flow rate of stream 1. For a
particular case where feed composition of stream 1 increases from 0.3 to 0.6 kg A/kg while the

1
flow rate of the same stream decreases from 15 to 10 kg/min, it is desired to control the mixing
process exit composition. This can be achieved by performing the following.

a) Predicting the exit composition when the mixing process is controlled using a proportional-
integral controller.
b) For a given integral-time, investigate the effect of the process time constant on the
behaviour of the mixing tank exit composition.
c) For a given process time constant, investigate the effect of the controller tuning parameters
‘controller gain and integral time’ on the mixing tank’s exit composition.

Assignment guidelines

 Report should be typed and about 10-15 pages.

 The format should follow that of a technical report (Introduction, problem statement,
hypothesis, objectives, methodology, results & discussion, conclusion and references).
 The objectives should be in line with what is given above in the assignment.
 A manual is provded on how to use MATLAB to solve differential equations resulting
from process modelling.
 MATLAB software can be downloaded from MathWorks MATLAB R2021a Free
Download (getintopc.com) and a video containing instruction on how to install can be
found from the same website or ‘ReadMe Win’ in the downloaded MATLAB folder.
Proportional Integral control
Approximate linearised model for the mixing process operated at constant volume 𝑽 is

=   w1,s  w2,s   x  xs   w1,s  x1  x1,s    x1,s  xs  w1  w1,s   1  xs   w2  w2,s 

dx
V
dt
Where 𝑥𝑠 , 𝑥1,𝑠 , 𝑤1,𝑠 , and 𝑤2,𝑠 are the steady state values of the exit and stream 1 composistion,
and inlet flow rates of stream 1 and 2. The variables 𝑥1 and 𝑤1 can abruptly change with time and
are thus are disturbance variables, whereas 𝑤2 is a manipulated variable.
The steady state exit composition can be obtained from the steady state mass balance.
w1,s x1,s  w2,s V
ws  , where ws  w1,s  w2,s and  
ws ws
The proportional-integral control law for this process can be expressed as

 K 
w 2  w 2 ,s  K C   x s  x   C  x  x  dt 
t

 I 0 s
