Implementation and Tuning of PID, Fractional PID and LA Controllers for pH Control

Abstract

Maintaining the pH of a fluid or a solution at a specific value is a concern in many industrial processes, wastewater management, and food and pharmaceutical production. Given the importance of controlling pH in many processes, the objective of this thesis is to study and compare the effectiveness of some controller algorithms to control the pH of a process. In this study, the performance of three controller algorithms, namely PID, fractional PID and LA controllers, is evaluated for the control of a simple neutralization process using conventional controller performance metrics. Performance metrics used are the response time, the Integral of the Time weighted Absolute Error (ITAE), the Integral of the Squared Error (ISE), and the Integral of the Squares of the changes (ΔU) in the manipulated variable (ISDU). The three controllers were therefore tuned to minimize one or a combination of the controller performance metrics. Results show that PID, fractional PID and LA controllers implemented and tested in this research are all worthy controllers for maintaining pH of the neutralization process. Simulation results show that the three controllers can be used with confidence to cope with the high nonlinearity of a pH neutralization process provided that the process is properly designed. The relative small gain in performance obtained with the fractional PID controller, compared to a linear PID controller, suggests that it is not worth resorting to a fractional PID controller given its complexity and higher computation effort. Results show that PID and LA controllers are easy to implement with short response time and low ITAE and ISDU performance metrics.