Design of an l1 Optimal Controller for a Hydrogen Reformer Plant

F. Tadeo1, Dpto Ingenieria de Sistemas y Automatica, University of Valladolid, Spain M.J. Grimble, Industrial Control Centre, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, United Kingdom P. Vega, Departamento de Informtica y Automtica, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain
Abstract The design of an l1 Optimal controller for a Hydrogen Reformer is presented. The objective of the Hydrogen Reformer process is to produce hydrogen by catalysis from desulphorized hydrocarbons, mixed with superheated steam. The controller to be designed is the fuel flow controller, whose main objective is to maintain the reformer temperature constant despite important variations in the temperature of the input steam. The design approach used here involves solving a modified Mixed Sensitivity l1 optimal control problem, with weights determined by the disturbance information and the performance specifications. These l1-optimal controllers can often handle a wider set of specifications than other robust control techniques. With the l1optimal controller the output temperature variation can be reduced to 1.9C, compared with 3.1C using the PID controller installed in the plant. Keywords: Robust Control, Process Control, L1 1. Introduction fed to the reformer. The catalyst temperature and the fuel flow are measured to implement the cascaded control structure shown in Figure 2. In the real process there are several disturbances, such as varying feed flow, fuel gas quality, steam temperature, etc. The most important disturbance is the steam temperature variation, which modifies directly the catalyst temperature. The control system must attenuate this disturbance as much as possible by acting on the fuel flow set-point. The flow control loop was considered adequate, so only the design of a controller for the outer loop was performed. The main objective was to obtain tighter control of the output temperature, without worsening the response to command changes. A schematic of the control structure is shown in Figure 3. A simplified model was obtained by modelling and identification [5]. The model was in transfer-function form from the input (Fuel-Flow Setpoint) to the output (Outlet Temperature) and includes the flow controller dynamics (Eq. 1) From this model the plant is a stable non-minimum phase plant with three zeros outside the unit circle (at z=15.45 and z=-0.791.57j). The corresponding disturbance model is shown in Eq. 2 The control system must reduce the effect of the disturbances on the output by using feedback. Note that, in this case, the plant unstable zeros makes a feedforward compensator inadequate.

The objective of the Hydrogen Reformer Process is to produce hydrogen from desulphorized hydrocarbons by catalysis. To generate hydrogen the hydrocarbons are mixed with superheated steam before entering the reformer tubes, where a nickel catalyst heated at high temperature (about 750C) produces the hydrogen. The high temperature necessary to speed up the reaction is produced by burning fuel in the reformer. The fuel flow must be controlled to maintain the desired catalyst temperature. A schematic diagram of the system is shown in Figure 1. The control system should maintain the desired catalyst temperature by modifying the amount of fuel which is

Corresponding author: Dr. Fernando Tadeo, Dpto.Ingeniera de Sistemas y Automtica, Facultad de Ciencias, 47005 Valladolid, Spain. Tlf: +34 983 423566. Fax:+34 983 423161. Email: fernando@autom.uva.es

W=

0.032z 1(1 + 0.2453z 1)(1 0.623257z 1)(1 + 0.999z 1)(1 15.4484z 1)[(1 + 0.788216z 1)2 + 1.5664292 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 (1 + 0.58958z )(1 0.615995z )(1 + 0.81983z )(1 0.910085z ) [(1 + 0.419267z ) + 0.379915 Equation 1: Nominal Model of the Plant

0.03(1 + 0.1216z 1)2 + 0.6900822 Wd = 1 1 1 1 (1 + 0.58958z )(1 0.615995z )(1 + 0.81983z )(1 0.910085z ) (1 + 0.419267z 1)2 + 0.3799152 Equation 2: Disturbance Model

2.

l1 Optimization

the
u

maximum

amplitude

of

the

signal:

The main objective of Robust Control is to ensure good performance in the presence of uncertainty in the model, external disturbances and measurement noise. Unfortunately, in most of the Robust Control methods, it is difficult to include design specifications in the time domain, such as the existence of saturation limits on the rate of variation of control signals, or overshoot conditions. These constraints create instabilities and loss of performance, when the robust controller is implemented in a real system. To solve these problems a technique based on the optimization of the l1 norm has been proposed [1]. As with other Robust Control techniques, the design specifications are transformed to conditions on the input and output signals. To obtain a control system which fulfills these requirements, it is necessary to describe the magnitude of the input and output signals in the system relative to a certain norm (cost measure), and to then optimize the transfer functions for the set of possible inputs. In the case of l1 analysis and design methods, it concerns input and output signals that are magnitude bounded (that is, described using the peak-to-peaknorm). Optimization in this case aims to minimize the peak-to-peak norm of the desired outputs when the inputs are magnitude bounded [7]. This minimization can be transformed into a constrained linear programming problem, which can be solved by standard methods [1][4][6]. Additional constraints can be added to the linear programming problem to allow for design specifications that cannot be expressed as a peak-to-peak norm minimization problem [1]. An additional advantage of the method is that the design is carried out using discrete-time system models, which is the natural approach to design computer-controlled systems (widely used in industry). The l1 optimization method deals with input and output signals which have bounded magnitude (that is, , which is equal to described using the peak-norm

= max u(t) ). The l1 design method minimizes the

response of the system). The advantages of using this kind of signal space to design a controller such as the one depicted in Figure 3 [3] are clear:

peak-to-peak norm of output signals, when the input signals can be described as the set of magnitud bounded signals. (This peak-to-peak norm is the l norm, defined as H = max h(t) , where h(t) is the impulse

* In many industrial applications the maximum amplitude of these signals is usually known, so it is possible to describe these signals as boundedamplitude signals: d (Vidyasagar, 1986) * Moreover the commands (c) that are applied to a control system are usually well known: they consist mainly of step and ramp inputs which can easily be bounded and described using the peak-norm:
c

umax or (1 - z-1)c

umax .

* In addition, performance specifications are usually given as limits on the maximum amplitude of control (u) or error signals (e). In order to describe these requirements as a limit of the norm of these signals we can use the peak-norm: u umax or e emax The minimization of the l1 norm can be transformed to a constrained linear programming problem, which can be easily solved using any of the available tools which solve such problems very efficiently. Moreover, there are many performance specifications which can be transformed to bounds on time responses and then added to the LP problem as additional constraints. These constraints are very interesting in practical applications, because it is possible to consider conditions such as noovershoot or no-undershoot conditions [1]. There is another important characteristic of this method: The design is carried out in the discrete-time space, which is a natural procedure to design computer-controlled systems for practical engineering problems. 3. Mixed-Sensitivity l1 Optimization

To design practical controller based on the minimization of an l1 norm, the Mixed Sensitivity Problem
C l1

min WS (I + WC) 1 WT WC(I + WC) 1

is also necessary to weight the effect of the disturbance on the control signal, which is determined by the control sensitivity M=CS. The controller is then calculated by solving the mixed sensitivity problem: min WSS WMM
1

was proposed and solved in [2] and was also studied in [6]. The main difficulties of this approach are the cancelations of stable plant zeros and poles by the controller, and the excessive control effort. To overcome these difficulties the Alternative Mixed Sensitivity problem which considers the Control Sensitivity instead of the Complementary Sensitivity is proposed in this paper, that is,
C l1 M = C(I + WC)1

In this particular example, the weightings were chosen based on the following ideas: WM: the control signal is limited for every frequency to reduce the control signal. At high frequencies the weight is reduced, to increase the control sensitivity between open-loop bandwidth and closed-loop bandwidth WS: as S should reduce low-frequency disturbances as much as possible it included an integrator. To avoid high frequency overshoots in S it was also weighted at very high frequencies. Figure 4 shows the selected weightings. The alternative mixed sensitivity problem was transformed to a constrained linear programming problem, as explained above, and solved using the Matlab Optimization Toolbox. The resulting controller was reduced to a 4th order controller, corresponding to the transfer function shown in Eq. 3. If necessary, to avoid significant errors in the poles due to decimal truncations in the coefficients, the controller can be implemented as two first order sections and one second order section. The characteristic transfer functions of the closed loop system are depicted in Figure 5. It is possible to see that the shapes of these transfer functions are adequate: the bandwidth of the closed loop system is 0.000218 rad/sec, so disturbances below this frequency will be filtered. The Complementary Sensitivity does not include any overshoot, so the step response will not include overshoot. The Control Sensitivity includes an overshoot, since it was necessary to increase the bandwidth of the closed-loop system. This must be greater than the open-loop bandwidth in order to reduce the effect of the disturbances.

min WS(I + WC) 1 WMC(I + WC) 1

This problem can be solved using the general l1 optimization theory, following a similar procedure as in the original Mixed Sensitivity Problems. It can be transformed to the following infinite-dimensional linear programing problem: min 1 2 , such that
i l1 1

WS 11 + W WM1 2 = I There is another advantage of using this alternative formulation: from an engineering point of view it is normally adequate to shape the control effort, which can be carried out by weighting the Control Sensitivity appropiately. This corresponds to the relationship between output disturbances and control signal.

4.

Design of an l1 optimal controller

The control system must reduce the effect of the disturbances in the output by feedback using a reasonable control signal. In signal terms, the objective is to minimize the maximum value of the output due to the disturbances, which is just Sn . If the disturbance is given by n = Wdd , the design problem can be stated as the problem of finding the controller that minimizes SWd . To ensure that the control signal is adequate it 1

C0 =

- 0.02429816 + 0.05754876z-1 - 0.03988948z-2 + 0.00369906z-3 + 0.00298457z-4 1 - 1.48796391 z-1 + 0.80655488 z- 2 - 0.42812033z- 3 + 0.10955173z- 4 Equation 3: l1-optimal Controller

5.

Simulation of the l1 controlled system

In order to test the performance of the controller in the real plant a fairly realistic model of the plant was simulated using Simulink. The real plant is now

controlled using a PID controller, which structure and tuning parameters were duplicated in a simulation [5], to compare the response with that of the l1 controlled system. A comparison of the outputs of the PID and the l1 controlled systems is shown in Figure 6. For

confidentiality reasons only the deviation from the nominal values are shown. It is possible to see that low-frequency disturbances are eliminated in the l1 controlled system, giving smaller deviation from the desired value. The l1 controller improves greatly the reference tracking properties: The maximum error decreased from yPID = 3.1 C to
yl1

7.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the comments and support of Mr. John Warren and Mr. Phil Fedenczuk of BP Grangemouth and the advice of Dr. Andrzej Ordys of the Advanced Control Technology Club, Glasgow. The first author would like to acknowledge the support of CICYT (grant TAP97-1144) 8. References

= 1.9 C . To obtain this the control signal must

change more frequently, as shown in Figure 7, but its maximum value decrease (the control sensitivity was weighted when the controller was designed): from
uPID

= 0.18 Km3 / h to ul1

= 0.19 Km3 / h

[1] M. A. Dahleh and I.J Diaz-Bobillo, 1995, Control of Uncertain Systems: a Linear Programming Approach, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. [2] M. A. Dahleh and J.B. Pearson, 1987, l1 Optimal Feedback Controllers for MIMO Discrete-time Systems. IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, 32 [3] M. J. Grimble, 1995, Robust Industrial Control. Prentice Hall [4] M. A. Mendlovitz, 1989, A Simple Solution to the l1 Optimization Problem. Systems and Control Letters, 12 [5] A. S. Shakoor, 1996, Industrial Uses of Predictive Control, MSc. Dissertation, University of Strathclyde [6] O. J. Staffans, 1993, The Four-Block Model Matching Problem in l1 and Infinite-Dimensional Linear Programming, SIAM J. Control And Optimization, 31. [7] M. Vidyasagar, 1986, Optimal Rejection of Persistent Bounded Disturbances. IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, 31
Hydrogen Exhaust

6.

Conclusions

The design of an l1 optimal controller for a Hydrogen Reformer plant has been presented. It has been seen that in many engineering problems there are performance specifications that can be considered using the peak-topeak-norm. To solve these problems a design method based on the optimization of the l1 norm, has been presented. It is important that the l1 optimal controllers can be calculated using commercially available linear programming tools, which are readily available. It has been discussed that the Mixed Sensitivity problem solved in the literature might not be adequate in certain situations, so an alternative Mixed Sensitivity problem has been proposed, involving the Sensitivity and the Control Sensitivity terms. An example of the advantages of an l1 controller, for the hydrogen reformer plant, revealed the advantages of this formulation when dealing with real engineering problems. When the l1-optimal controller is compared with a PI controller (that reflect the control system currently implemented in the plant), the l1-optimal controller is found to provide tighter control of the reformer temperature. This is maintained in a smaller range (1.9C), improving the performance of the Hydrogen Reformer Process. The response to step changes in the command input is adequate, with a settling time of nearly 1 hour. The controller is a high order controller (4th order) which can implemented in a computer-controlled system. In summary, the l1-optimization problem has proved to be a practical method to design robust controllers for industrial plants. There are still some open problems with this method, such as the weighting functions selection, and the design of reduced-order controllers, which will be the subject of further research.

Steam Catalizer Tubes Fuel Burner

Feed Gas

Figure 1: Hydrogen Reformer System

Flow control loop

Temperature Set Point Temperature Controller Fuel Flow Setpoint Flow Controller Fuel Valve

Steam Temperature Disturbance Hydrogen Reformer

Figure 5: Characteristic Transfer Functions of the l1 controlled system

Output Temperature

C 3 2

PID

Temperature control loop

Fig 2: Full model of the hydrogen reformer

d Disturbance

1 0 -1
n

Wd

Controller

Plant

+ +

-2 0

l1
1 2 Time (second) 3 x 10
4

Figure 6: Tracking errors when disturbances are present Fig 3: Control System Structure
10 2

Km /h 0.08

PID

WS
10 1

0.06

l1

WM

0.04 0.02 0 -0.02

10

10 -1

10

-2

-0.04
10 -4 10 -3 10 -2 10 -1

10

-3 -5 10

Frequency (rad/sec)

1 2 Time (second)

3 x 10
4

Figure 4: Weighting Functions selected to design the l1 optimal controller

10 1

Figure 7: Control signal when disturbances are present

10

10

-1

10

-2

10

-3

10

-4 10 -6 10

-4

frequency (rad/sec)

10

-2