International Journal of
IS Systems , Algorithms &
Design and Simulation of Fuzzy Controller for Heat Exchanger
1
Debi Prasad Dash, 2Mrs.Amruta S.Deshpande
1,2
Department of Instrumentation and Control
College Of Engineering Pune, Pune, India
e-mail: debisilicon@gmail.com1, asd.instru@coep.ac.in2
Abstract - Shell and tube heat exchanger system is widely used
in chemical plants because it can sustain wide range of temper-
ature and pressure. The main purpose of a heat exchanger sys-
tem is to transfer heat from a hot fluid to a cooler fluid, so tem-
perature control of outlet fluid is of prime importance. In this
paper we design a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for shell and
tube heat exchanger system, uses MATLAB as a visual model-
ling tool and simulation research based on SIMULINK. The
purpose of this controller is to maintain a uniform temperature
at the output of the heat exchanger system, there by varying the
input flow rate. The control action taken by the FLC is based
on the deviation from set point i.e. error and rate of change of
error. The designed fuzzy logic controller for the heat exchang-
er system is then compared with a conventional PID controller.
The result shows that FLC has less overshoot and settling time
than conventional PID controller.
Keywords: FLC, PID, Shell and tube heat exchanger.
I. INTRODUCTION
In practice, all chemical processes involve production or
absorption of energy in the form of heat. Heat exchanger is
commonly used in chemical processes to transfer heat from a
hot fluid through a solid wall to a cooler fluid. There are
different types of heat exchanger used in the industry but
most of the industry use shell and tube type heat exchanger
system [1].
The principle of operation is simple. Two fluids of different
temperature are brought into close contact but are prevented
from mixing by physical barrier. The temperature of two
fluids will tends to equalize and this is because of the heat
transfer taking place between them. Based on heat transfer
efficiency, the cross flow shell and tube heat exchanger has
proven efficient than its counter parts. They have large ratios
of heat transfer surface to volume than double-pipe heat ex-
changers, and they are easy to manufacture in a large variety
of sizes and configurations. They can operate at high pres-
sures, and their construction facilitates disassembly for peri-
odic maintenance and cleaning. Shell-and-tube heat ex-
changers find widespread use in refrigeration, power genera-
tion, heating and air conditioning, chemical processes, manu-
facturing, and medical applications. A shell and tube heat
exchanger is an extension of the double-pipe configuration.
Instead of a single pipe within a larger pipe, it consists of a
bundle of pipes or tubes enclosed within a cylindrical shell
[2].
This paper reports a work that considers a shell and tube heat
exchanger and builds a single input-single output model of the
system with the help of experimental data. The outlet tempera-
ture of the heat exchanger system has to be kept at a desired
set point according to the process requirement. Firstly, a clas-
Volume 3, Issue ICRAET13, March 2013, ISSN Online: 2277-2677
J AA Applications
sical PID controller is implemented in a feedback control loop
so as to achieve the control objectives. PID controller exhibits
high overshoots which is undesirable. Generally PID control-
ler is only suitable for linear system and requires that the
mathematical model of controlled object is exact enough,
while heat exchanger system in itself has traits of big delay,
time varying, nonlinear and much destabilization which makes
it difficult to build mathematical models. But fuzzy control
neednt build mathematical model of controlled objects, it has
benign robustness and nonlinear control characteristics and
can take more effective control of time-varying, nonlinear and
complex controlled objects. Hence a fuzzy logic controller
(FLC) is proposed in this paper for control of output tempera-
ture of heat exchanger, with parameters of control as error,
change in error. The implementation of FLC has reduced the
overshoot further. Tuning of proposed FLC is very easy as a
gain at the output is used to tune the controller. Simulation is
done with the help of SIMULINK software. Simulation result
shows that fuzzy controller has good settling time and reduced
overshoot as compared to the PID controller.
II. SHELL AND TUBE HEAT EXCHANGER SYSTEM
A typical interacting chemical process for heating consists of
a chemical reactor and a shell and tube heat exchanger sys-
tem. The process fluid which is the output of the chemical
reactor is stored in the storage tank. The storage tank sup-
plies the fluid to the heat exchanger system using a pump
and a non returning valve. The heat exchanger heats up the
fluid to a desired set point using super heated steam at 180C
supplied from the boiler. The super heated steam comes from
the boiler and flows through the tubes, whereas, the process
fluid flows through the shells of the shell and tube heat ex-
changer system.
Different assumptions have been considered in this research
paper. The first assumption is that the inflow and the outflow
rate of fluid are same, so that the fluid level is maintained
constant in the heat exchanger. The second assumption is the
heat storage capacity of the insulating wall is negligible
[6].The objective is to maintain the outlet temperature of the
process fluid, C, at its desired value or set point, rC, in
the presence of disturbances in the process fluid flow, qm(kg/
sec), flowing inside the tubes of the heat exchanger, and inlet
temperature iC. The steam flow, qms(kg/sec), is the varia-
ble that can be adjusted to control the outlet temperature. In
this feedback process control loop, the controller is reverse
acting , the valve used is of air to open (fail-close) type. A
thermocouple is used as the sensing element, which is imple-
mented in the feedback path of the control architecture. The
temperature of the outgoing fluid is measured by the thermo-
couple and the output of the thermocouple (voltage) is sent
to the transmitter unit, which eventually converts the thermo-
83
 Design and Simulation of Fuzzy Controller for Heat Exchanger International Journal of
IS Systems , Algorithms &
J AA Applications

couple output to a standardized signal in the range of 4-20 the transfer function block diagram of feedback control of
mA. This output of the transmitter unit is given to the control- shell and tube heat exchanger system.
ler unit. The controller implements the control algorithm,
compares the output with the set point and then gives neces- Table II. Transfer Function of Various Parts of Process
sary command to the final control element via the actuator
unit. The actuator unit is a current to pressure converter and 50
Transfer function of process
the final control unit is an air to open (fail-close) valve. The 30 s + 1
actuator unit takes the controller output in the range of 4-20
mA and converts it in to a standardized pressure signal, i.e. in 0 .1 3
Transfer function of valve
the range of 3-15 psi. The valve actuates according to the con-
3s + 1
troller decisions. Fig. 1 shows the basic feedback control
scheme implemented in a shell and tube heat exchanger sys- Gain of valve
tem. 0.13

Gain of current to pressure converter

0.75

Transfer function of disturbance variables 1 3

(flow and temperature disturbances re- ,
spectively) 30 s + 1 30 s + 1

0.16
Transfer function of thermocouple
10 s + 1

Fig.1 . Shell and tube heat exchanger system control scheme

III. MATHEMETICAL MODELING

In this section, the heat exchanger system, actuator, valve, sen-
sor are mathematically modelled using the available experi-
mental data [7]. The experimental process data is shown in Ta-
ble I .
Table I: Process Data
Exchanger response to the steam flow gain 50C/(kg/sec)
Fig. 2. Feedback control of shell and tube heat exchanger system
Time constants 30 sec

Exchanger response to variation of process fluid IV. CONTROLLER DESIGN

1 C/(kg/sec)
flow gain The design of FLC consists of several steps. First, the variables
Exchanger response to variation of process tem-
for the fuzzy control system are determined. The universe of
3C/C discourse for all the variables involved are then set. Here, the
perature gain
FLC is designed with two input variables and one output varia-
Control valve capacity 1.6 kg/sec for steam
ble. The input variables are error(e) and change in error(e) that
Time constant of control valve 3 sec is difference between the set point temperature and the actual
temperature and the rate of change of error and output is con-
The range of temperature sensor 50C to 150C troller output [5].The design is based upon using e-e space
consisting of the plot e(t) vs e(t) [3]. Fig. 3 shows the FLC to
Time constant of temperature sensor 10 sec
control the temperature in the outlet of the shell and tube heat
exchanger system with error and change in error as input.
From the experimental data, the transfer functions and gains
are shown in Table II. The input variables and the output variable is designed using
five membership functions. Triangular membership function is
To control the exit temperature of the heat exchanger system a used for both input and output variables. The rule table is
classical feedback controller is used. The PID control algo- formed in such a way that the table itself became fuzzy with a
rithm remains the most popular approach for industrial pro- zero main diagonal separating positive and negative fuzzy rules
cess control despite continual advances in control theory. This that are also partitioned into sub fuzzy rules among themselves.
is not only due to the simple structure which is conceptually This is shown in Table III. The rule base developed for this
easy to understand and, which makes manual tuning possible, system is based on MAX-MIN inference. The MAX-MIN
but also to the fact that the algorithm provides adequate per- method of composition effectively expresses the approximate
formance in the vast majority of applications. Fig. 2 represents and interpolative reasoning used by humans when they employ

Volume 3, Issue ICRAET13, March 2013, ISSN Online: 2277-2677 84

 International Journal of
Design and Simulation of Fuzzy Controller for Heat Exchanger
IS Systems , Algorithms &
J AA Applications

linguistic propositions for deductive reasoning [8]. That is MIN

is used for the 'and' conjunction and 'MAX' is used for the 'OR' Table IV. Comparison of PID and Fuzzy Controller
conjunction. For this system MIN conjunction is used [4]. Cen- Settling Time
troid method is used for defuzzyfication . S.NO Controller Overshoot (%)
(sec)
1 PID 180 90

2 Fuzzy 14 80

The PID parameters by Ziegler-Nichols tuning are P=14.64,

I=0.976, D=54.9. The gain which is used at the output of fuzzy
controller to match the signals with the predefined membership
parameters is 1.23.

Fig. 3. FLC to control the temperature in a heat exchanger system

Table III. Fuzzy Rule Table

e
Positive
Negative Big Negative Zero Positive
Small
(NB) Small (NS) (ZZ) Big (PB)
(PS)

Positive
Big(PB)
ZZ PS PS PB PB

Positive
NS ZZ PS PS PB
Fig. 4. Comparison of Fuzzy Logic Controller with PID Controller
Small (PS)

e Zero(ZZ) NS NS ZZ PS
Negative
Small (NS)
NB NS NS ZZ
Negative
Big(NB)
NB NB NS NS
The fuzzy sets are designed such that the response is faster,
smoother and rules are fired for all values within the range. The
rule is developed based on experts knowledge that is by thor-
oughly understanding the problem defined and the complica-
tions involved; based on which rules are fired. Or by means of
simple trial and basis also rules can be fired. A gain block is
used after the controller output to match the signals with the
predefined membership parameters. In order to prevent zero
division that causes simulation problems such as delayed simu-
lation time and simulation hanging, a signal route has been pro-
vided.
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In order to validate control performance of the fuzzy controller
designed in this paper, it is compared with the conventional PID
controller. To evaluate the performance of the different control-
lers this paper has considered two vital parameters of the step
response of the system. The first parameter is the maximum
overshoot and the second parameter is the settling time. A com-
parative study of their performance has been shown in the Table
IV below .The simulation result is shown in Fig. 4.
Table IV shows that overshoot of PID is 180%.To reduce this
high overshoot FLC is implemented. With the implementation
of FLC overshoot reduced to 14%, an improvement of 92 %.
Settling time of FLC is also less than PID.
VI. CONCLUSION
PS
A Fuzzy Logic Controller is designed for a crossed flow shell
and tube heat exchanger system and its performance is com-
PS pared with conventional PID controller. The performance com-
parison results prove that the FLC has a lesser settling time and
ZZ overshoot when compared with PID controller. Thereby FLC
outperforms conventional PID control.
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Volume 3, Issue ICRAET13, March 2013, ISSN Online: 2277-2677 85