NONLINEAR PI CONTROLLER FOR pH PROCESS

The control of pH is one of the most difficult challenges in the process industry because of the severe nonlinearities and high precision required in manipulating the flow rate. The Wiener model, which consists of a linear dynamic element followed by a nonlinear static element, is used for representing such nonlinear processes. Piecewise continuous polynomials are used for mapping the nonlinear static gain accurately. A nonlinear PI controller was designed based on the Wiener model. Simulation results on the nonlinear mathematical model are presented to highlight the superior performance of the Wiener model based nonlinear PI controller in comparison to that of the local linear PI controller. The performance of the nonlinear PI controller was further improved upon by using the method of inequalities to obtain a single set of PI controller settings that takes into account the parametric variations in the linear dynamic element at different operating points. Simulation and experimental results are presented to support the work.