International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System

IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

Smart Controller Design for Chemical Processes Using Genetic

Algorithm
Yogesh Chaudhari
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
Datta Meghe Institute of Engineering Technology and Research,
Wardha R.T.M Nagpur University, India

ABSTRACT determine optimal or near optimal PID

In this paper based on the conception of
evolution, a method has been proposed for
control engineering problems. This method
proposed how GA is applied to parameters
optimization of proportional-integral-
derivative (PID) controller for single input
single output (SISO) system such as
continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) and
multi-input multi-output (MIMO) distillation
column system (DCS). The systems are
modeled in Simulink and GA algorithm is
implemented in MATLAB. In order to prove
the e effectiveness of the proposed controller
the simulation results are compared with the
existing method such as Ziegler-Nichol's (ZN)
and decentralized relay feedback (DRF)
method.
Keywords: Genetic algorithm, PID Controller
. The remainder of this paper is structured as
I. INTRODUCTION
The field control theory has been developed
significantly in the last couple of decades,
however the importance of proportional-
integral-derivative (PID) controller in different
industry remain unaffected. The reason behind
this, it is simple structure which can be easily
understood and implement. Industries too can
boast of the extensive use of PID controller
because of its robustness and simplicity. The
design of such a controller requires
specification of three parameters; proportional
gain , integral gain and derivative gain .
Unfortunately, it has been quite difficult to
tune the gain of PID controller properly
because many industrial plants are often
burdened with problems such as higher order,
time delays, and nonlinearities. It is hard to
parameter with classical tuning method. For
this reasons, it is highly desirable to increase
the capabilities of PID controller by adding
new features. Several approaches have been
documented in literature for determining the
PID parameters, first found by Ziegler Nichols
(ZN) tuning [1],Neural network [2], fuzzy
based approach [3], particle swarm
optimization techniques (PSO) [4] Genetic
Algorithm [5] are just a few among these
numerous works.
In this paper, Genetic algorithm (GA)
approache is proposed for optimal tuning of
PID controller parameters by minimizing
integral of absolute error for two system
known as continuous stirred tank reactor [6]
(CSTR) and distillation column system
[7](DCS).
follows. Starting with the introduction in
Section I, Section II provides a brief overview
PID controller. In Section III, CSTR system is
introduced, Section IV describes how GA is
used to design the PID controller optimally for
CSTR system and its Simulation result is
presented. Section V introduces the MIMO
systems used in this paper and Section VI
present how GA is applied to design a PID
controller for MIMO system. Finally, the
paper is concluded in Section VII.
II. PID CONTROLLER
Processes with only one output being control
by a single manipulated variable are classify
as single-input single-output (SISO) systems.
For the process having more than one control
loop can be called multi-input multi-

63 Yogesh Chaudhari
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
output(MIMO) or multivariable process which
very often found that in power plant, refinery
process, chemical industries and many other
fields [8],[9]. The control of these processes is
more difficult than SISO processes. Because
there is an interaction between other controls
loops of MIMO processes. Therefore the
method used for SISO systems cannot use for
control of MIMO systems effectively.
Consider the multi variable PID control loop
in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Block Diagram of a PID
Controller
In the frequency domain, the relation between
the PID controller input E (error signal) and
output U (input to the plant) can be expressed
by the following transfer function:
(1)
(2) Where U(s) and E(s) are the control
(controller output) and tracking error signals
in frequency-domain respectively; is the
proportional gain, is the integration gain and
is the derivative gain. is the integral
action time or reset PID time and is
referred to as the derivation action time or rate
time. In Figure.1, for multivariable process
P(s) could be demonstrated as following.
Where is the transfer function between
and . In Figure.1 vectors and Y, U and E
are in the following form
64 Yogesh Chaudhari
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015
Multivariable PID controller C(s) in Figure. 1
is as in following form.
(4)
Where that i, j ϵ {1, 2 . . . n|i ≠ j} in the
following form
Where is the proportional, is the integral
and is the derivative gains of the PID
controller .
The structure of TITO system can show in the
form of block diagram in Figure.2 and the
transfer matrix for this system is
From Equation. 6 element of diagonal matrix
and are direct loop transfer function of
R1-Y1 and R2-Y2, while off diagonal matrix
and are cross coupling between loop
transfer function. The effect of cross coupling
is call interaction; this effect can produce
several undesirable influences or prohibits
satisfactory control system. In this case, the
effect can removed or decrease to minimize by
use decoupling method. Decoupling method is
technique of used to transform transfer matrix
of system to diagonal transfer matrix by use
decoupled matrix.
In designing PID controllers, the goal is to
tune proper coefficients , and so that
the output has some desired characteristics.
Usually in time domain, these characteristics
are given in terms of overshoot, rise time,
settling time and steady state error. Two kinds
of performance criteria in output tracking
usually considered in the control designing are
the integral squared error (ISE) and integral
absolute error (IAE) of desired output.
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

In multivariable controller designing, one of endothermic (require energy input) and

the major aims is that controller could therefore, requires that energy either be
decouple transfer function matrix P (s). That is removed or added to the reactor for a constant
the controller be designed in such a way that temperature to be maintained.
track the desired input and reject the In this paper, the control problem of an ideal
response for for all i, j ϵ {1, 2 . . . n|i ≠ j}. jacketed CSTR system Figure.3 is considered,
where the following exothermic and
irreversible first-order reaction is taking place:
(8)
With a kinetic rate law:
E (9)
rA  k (T )cA  k0 exp( )cA
RT
Under the assumptions of constant volume,
Figure 2: A General structure of TITO perfect mixing inside the reactor and constant
system reacting mixture heat capacity, following mass
Consider the decoupling aim; IAE is defined balance for species A, as well as an overall
in the following form. energy balance for the reactor can be written
as
(10)
dCA F
 (CA,in  CA )  k (T )CA
Where is the absolute error of output dt V
in tracking input and is the dT F h UAr (11)
 (Tin  T )  r k (T )cA  (T  T j )
dt V cp V cp
absolute error caused by the effect of the input
on the output ,( ). The source of Under the assumptions of uniform temperature
of the jacket fluid inside the circulation tubes
is the coupling problem. The aim is to
and constant water heat capacity, an energy
design a controller to track the desired output balance for the jacket can be simplified as
and to decouple controlled process as much as dT j w P UAr
possible. To do this,using IAE as a criterion  Fcw (Tcw  T j )   (T  T j )
dt mo cw mo Cw mo (12)
for designing PID controller, we tune the
optimal parameters of a PID to control a two In Equation 8-12 Where,t- time, C-
different test systems known as continuous concentrations, T-temperature, - jacket
stirred tank reactor (Test System-I) and
temperature, specific heat capacities,
distillation column model (Test System-II)
using GA. densities, F- volumetric flow rate,
over all effective mass of the heating
III. TEST SYSTEM - I /cooling system, V- reactor volume, heat
Consider a continuous stirred tank model exchange surface, Heat capacity of
(CSTR)[10]. CSTRs are very important water, P - power Input to the heater, -
equipment in the chemical and biochemical Temperature of cooling water, U- heat
industry, offering a diverse range of researches transfer coefficient
in the area of the chemical and control
engineering. The CSTR system has the
characteristics of time varying, nonlinear and
time delay. In CSTR, chemical reactions are
either exothermic (release energy) or

65 Yogesh Chaudhari
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
Figure 3.A CSTR control system
Referring to details given in [11] for CSTR
and using the numerical values a linear model
is developed around the steady-state point.
The linearization can carried out will be
respect to product ( c A and T) and feed ( c Ain
and Tin ). The goal is to control the reactor
composition by manipulating the cool rate
through the control signal u.
IV. DESIGN OF INTELLIGENT PID
CONTROLLER
1. Proposed GA-PID Controller
Focus of this paper is to present optimal
tuning of PID controller Equation 2 using GA.
The control system block diagram is shown in
Figure.4
Figure 4: Block diagram of optimal PID
controller with GA for CSTR system
For every optimization process it is not only
crucial the selection of the solver but the
design of objective function as well. Further it
is worth to note that in case of GA the way of
66 Yogesh Chaudhari
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015
coding is very important, i.e. the
representation of searched parameters of the
task. Implementation of the GA have been
done using Matlab/Simulink environment.
2. Objective Function
Writing an objective function is the most
challenging part of creating GA. In this paper,
the objective function is required to evaluate
the best PID controller for the system. An
objective function could be created to find a
PID controller that gives the smallest
overshoot, fastest rise time or quickest settling
time. However, in order to combine all of
these objectives it was decided to design an
objective function that will minimize the error
of the controlled system. Each chromosome in
the population is passed into the objective
function one at a time. The chromosomes is
then evaluated and assigned a number to
represent its fitness, the bigger its number the
better its fitness. The GA uses the
chromosomes fitness value to create a new
population consists of the fittest members. The
chromosomes are formed by the three values
that correspond to the three gains to be
adjusted in order to achieve a satisfactory
behavior of PID controller. This is shown in
Figure.5. The gains K P , Ki and K d are real
numbers and characterize the individual to be
evaluated. These gains are used to create a
PID controller according to Equation 1.
Figure 5: Chromosome structure of PID
The newly formed PID controller is placed in
a unity feedback loop with the CSTR transfer
function. The controlled system is given a step
input and the error is assessed using an
appropriate error performance indices i.e. IAE.
A performance index is a qualitative measure
of the performance of the system. The
chromosomes isassigned an overall fitness
value according to the fitness value according
to the magnitude of the error, the smaller the
error the larger the fitness value.
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

1 The single loop PID parameter tuning for

Fitnessvalue  (13) CSTR system is accomplished by ZN
Performanceindex
At the end, to check whether GA procedure algorithm and GA. Optimization of parameters
for PID controller using GA has been done 20
leads to a stable system or not is confirmed by
times for every objective function. The GA
the poles of controlled system and if they process stop when 40 number of generation
found to be unstable that is poles on the right have evolved and the time required for one
half of the S-plane, the error is assigned an simulation is 25 second. The best parameters
extremely large value to make sure that the values are obtained according to Table.2 and
chromosomes is not selected. 3, where the step response performance is
evaluated based on the overshoot, settling time
The overall intelligent PID controller with GA and rise time. The corresponding plots for the
for CSTR system can be explain in flow chart step responses are shown in Figure.7.
as shown in Figure.6 Table 1: GA Parameters
GA Parameters Values
Population Size 40
Generation 40
Crossover Operator Arithmetic
Mutation Probability 0.2
Fitness Function IAE
As seen in Table.2 and 3 and Figure.7 step
response of GA-PID has no overshoot and
settling time is also improved in comparison
with ZN-PID.
The overall comparison of the performances
using GA based PID tuned controller it is
observed that the GA method is able to obtain
the desirable PID parameters against
convential tuning. The advantages of one
method with respect to the other depend on the
designer needs and constraints. The system
design is done for one operating point; it is
worth looking into adapting the controllers to
different operating points considered.
Table 2: Optimize PID parameters
Tuning
Method
Figure 6: Flow chart of optimal PID Z-N PID -1.4702 -0.0601 0
controller with GA for CSTR system GA-PID2(IAE) -0.5131 -0.0321 -0.2342
Table 3: Step response performance for
3. Simulation Results PID controller
In this section there will be presented the
Tuning Overshoot Rise Settling
results of optimal tuning of PID controller
Method (%) Time Time
using presented strategies.To obtain the
Z-N PID 27.7 9.96 103
optimal controller parameters for CSTR
GA-PID 0 35.3 50.6
system using GA following parameters are
(IAE)
used, shown Table 1.
67 Yogesh Chaudhari
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

Figure 8: Schematic of Distillation column

Figure 7: Comparison between the step response of system
ZN-PID and GA-PID. DCS is a 2 2 MIMO systems with strong
interactions between the two input and output
V.TEST SYSTEM- II pairs. The four transfer functions in
Test system used here is distillation column multivariable process have first-order
(DCS). A simple DCS system is shown in dynamics and significant time delays. The
Figure.8. The matrix transfer function of DCS control objective is the tracking outputs y1 and
is defined as y2 by control inputs = = 1, and
decoupling control process as much as
possible. In [12] a multivariable PID controller
for the DCS is designed using decentralized
The matrix transfer function of DCS is defined relay feedback (DRF) method. The diagonal
as Equation. 14 Liquid mixtures that is going and off diagonal elements of this controller are
to be processed is known as the feed. The feed designed in PI and PID forms, respectively.
tray divides the column into a top (enriching This controller is as
or rectification) section and a bottom
(stripping) section and is the temperature
of the ith tray. Heat is supplied to the reboiler
to generate vapour and S(s) represents the
steam valve to control the heat. The vapor Table 4. GA Parameters for MIMO PID
moves up the column, and as it exits the top of controller
the unit, it is cooled down by a condenser. The GA Parameters Values
condensed liquid is stored in a holding vessel Population Size 100
known as the reflux drum. Some of this liquid Generation 80
is then recycled back to the top of the column. Crossover Operator Arithmetic
This is called the reflux, where R(s) is reflux
Mutation Probability 0.3
flow
Fitness Function IAE

68 Yogesh Chaudhari
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

VI. SIMULATION RESULTS of GA converged to its steady state value,

In this section a simulation results of
multivariable PID controller for MIMO
system is present. To compare the results of
GA and DRF method in tuning parameter of
PID Controller for plant controller C(s) is
considered as
14.9334, at iteration about 80. Parameters of
PID controller and there relevant IAE cost
obtained by GA and DRF methods are
demonstrated in Table.5 and 6.
Table 6: Different parts of cost function
IAE that are optimized by method, GA and
DRF
Method

GA 3.02 1.351 3.499 7.629 15.502

DRF 4.95 1.061 4.417 9.071 19.504
That is, the diagonal and off-diagonal Parameters of PID controller and their relevant
elements of the designed controller would be IAE cost obtained by GA and DRF methods
PI and PID respectively. Then the task is a 10 are demonstrated in Table.5 and 6. According
dimensional optimization problem of to Table.6, the controller by GA has resulted
determining the optimal coefficients in the least costs. That is comparing to
[ ] to DRF, using controller obtained by GA, the
minimize the cost function first output track the first input and it
decoupled from second input in the best way.
Also, considering the controller obtained
by DRF has better performance than that of
GA i.e. DRF decouples the first output from
second input, better than GA. But for second
Table 5: Optimize PID parameters obtained output, the controller obtained GA is the best
by GA and DRF one, because its relevant IAE21 and IAE22
PID coefficients GA DRF cost are least, resulting in the most tracking
and the least coupling. Nevertheless,
0.0111 0.184 considering the total cost IAE, the controller
obtained by GA has generally best
0.0155 0.0469
performance.
-0.0290 -0.0102
Figure.9 and 10 shows the response of
-0.0019 0.0229 controlled distillation column process to step
-0.0244 0.0082 input using controller obtained by GA.
0.0187 -0.0674
0.0040 0.0159
-0.0274 -0.0537
-0.0211 -0.0660
-0.0050 -0.0155
To obtain the optimal controller parameters
for DCS using GA following parameters are
used as shown in Table. 4Optimization of
parameters for PID controller using GA has
been done 10 times for objective function. The
GA process stops when 80 number Figure 9: The response of distillation
generations have evolved, time required for column process to step input (Up: First
one simulation is 10 min. The minimum cost output)
69 Yogesh Chaudhari
 International Journal of Electronics, Electrical and Computational System
IJEECS
ISSN 2348-117X
Volume 4, Issue 5
May 2015

[4] Zwe-Lee Gaing.(2004). A particle swarm

optimization approach for optimum design
of PID controller in AVR system, IEEE
Trans on Energy Conversion, Vol.19 (2),
pp. 384.
[5] Krohling,R.A., Rey,J.P.(2001). Design of
optimal disturbance rejection PID
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[6] William L.Luyben (1996).Process
Modeling, Simulation and Control for
Chemical Engineers, McGraw-Hill
Pub.Co.
[7] W. L. Luyben(1986). A simple method for
Figure 10: The response of distillation column tuning siso controllers in a multivariable
process to step input (Down: second output)
system. Industrial and Engineering
Chemistry Product Research and
VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Development,25:654-660.
This paper has been meant as a comprehensive
[8]Astrom.K.J,Hagglund.T(1995).PIDControll
discussion of how GA, which is a relatively
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unknown field to many control engineers, has
Design and Tuning, Instrument Society of
been used quite extensively for controller
America,North Carolina.
design over the last couple of decades. This
[9]KwangY.Lee Robert Dimeo.(1995).Boiler-
paper also explains how GA is used to
turbine control system design using a
determine optimal PID parameters of
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Industrial equipment’s. From the simulation
Energy Conversion, 10 No:4:752-759.
results shown in this paper it has been proved
[10] Jana.A.K. (2007). Nonlinear State
that GA based approaches is an intelligent way
Estimation and Generic Model Control of
to determine the optimal PID parameters and it
a Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor,
is more autonomous.
International .Journal. Chemical Reactor
Eng, vol. 5, pp. 1-15.
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70 Yogesh Chaudhari