Monday, June 17, 2013

Implement an Effective Loop Tuning Strategy

CATEGORY: PROCESS CONTROL
CEP - Chemical Engineering Progress, January 2013
Implement an Effective Loop Tuning Strategy
Norman Ito, Timothy Olsen
Emerson Process Management
Use these loop tuning guidelines to improve process control and enhance product uniformity
Many undergraduate chemical engineering programs teach the Ziegler-Nichols tuning methods, developed by John G. Ziegler and Nathaniel B. Nichols in the 1940s. This tuning method has large controller gain and short integral time, and sometimes creates process oscillations, which are not good for most chemical engineering applications. As a result, many process control engineers revert to tune-by-feel techniques.
In tuning by feel, individual control loops are tuned as fast as possible without disrupting upstream and downstream control loops.  However, by tuning only individual loops, the overall process performance and the ability to recover from disturbances are reduced. When a process has been tuned by feel, console operators often need to put controllers into manual operation to settle the process down after a major process disturbance.
Automatic process control attenuates disturbances and maintains control of the process variables to match desired setpoints, and appropriate tuning enables this capability.  This article describes process control basics, and details a step-by-step process for control loop tuning.
Free Full Text Source: http://euedocs.emersonprocess.co.uk/groups/public/documents/articles_articlesreprints/cep_loop_tuning_wilson.pdf

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