Power plants–especially coal-fired boilers–pose a set of process control problems unparalleled in other industries. Rapid load ramps, continuous unit demand changes, variable fuel quality and process ...

Proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control is one of the most common types of automatic control used in the power industry. A PID controller continuously ...

The tuning of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control loops was an important change at HollyFrontier’s Navajo Refinery in Artesia, N.M. Its hands-on, “mandraulic” culture was no longer cutting ...

With the ever-increasing complexity of today’s printed circuit boards, the many voltages required to properly power all the integrated circuit loads are now managed by a range of point of load (POL) ...

Every plant in the process industry most likely has several control loops that do not perform well. Although there are many factors that may negatively affect control loop performance, a few of these ...

On my first project as a combustion control engineer, I was responsible for loop checks and for watching the experts tune the system controls. The first loop I tried to tune solo was the drum level ...

Machines and processes are controlled using many strategies, from simple ladder logic to custom algorithms for specialized process control, but proportional-integral-derivative (PID) is the most ...

The process controller’s job is to maintain the process variable at setpoint, regardless of whether the setpoint is constant or has just been changed. The controller contains the “control algorithm,” ...

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has emerged as a versatile and robust strategy in modern control engineering, enabling controllers to predict future system behaviour and optimise performance over a ...

Today’s ac servo systems are much different than those built even 10 years ago. Faster processors and higher resolution encoders are enabling manufacturers to implement amazing advances in tuning ...

Event-based control systems represent a paradigm shift from conventional time-driven sampling methods by updating control actions only when a significant event occurs. This strategy not only reduces ...