CDB3062

Chemical Engineering Laboratory 3

January 2020
ICON Mini Project

Title : Air Conditioning control system

Group : 4G
Group members : ABDUL CARIM COMANDA 25563     
MOMADE      
FARRAH ATIKAH ABD RAHMAN      25312     
SITI NUR FATIHAH BINTI ADNAN      25398     
NASRIN FATINI BINTI AHMAD 17005968     
FAUZI     
MUHAMMAD ANWAR BIN HAIZAL      25202     
Coordinator : Dr. Serene Lock Sow Mun
Lab Demonstrator : Mr. Nafiu Barambu
Date of Submission : 3 March 2020
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Control systems are the basis of many inventions which play an important role in the
advancement of modern technology that has become more influential in current times. Among its
functions that help people perform daily activities in various fields including, daily home
appliances like refrigerators, automatic rice cookers, washing machines and air conditioners and
industrial needs like the manufacturing sectors such as automobile factories and robotics. A control
system can be thought of as any system where additional hardware is added to regulate the behavior
of a dynamic system (Salim, 2010). For this project the application of control system that will be
further discussed is Air Conditioning.

Air conditioning is the process of removing heat and moisture from the interior of an
occupied space to improve the thermal comfort of the occupants. Air conditioning is widely used
in both domestic and commercial environments. (Haines and Hittle, 2006). The creation of the
modern electrical air conditioning unit and industry is credited to the American inventor Willis H.
Carrier. After graduating he began experimenting with air conditioning as a way to solve an
application problem that needed a cooling system (Woodford, 2019). According to Woodford
(2019) the first air conditioner was designed and built in Buffalo, New York by Carrier and began
working on 17 July 1902. His invention controlled not only temperature but also humidity. He
used his knowledge of the heating of objects with steam and reversed the process. Instead of
sending air through hot coils, he sent it through cold coils (filled with cold water). The air was
cooled, and thereby the amount of moisture in the air could be controlled, which in turn made the
humidity in the room controllable.

The control system used in air conditioning has the purpose to control the temperature
and the humidity in a space. First, warm air from the room is sucked into the air conditioner from
the base of the machine. The air flows over some pipes through which a coolant fluid is circulating.
The coolant fluid is set on a temperature that will enable it to cool down the air to the specified
temperature. The coolant fluid cools down the incoming air and a dehumidifier removes any excess
moisture. A fan in the air conditioner then blows the cooled air back to the room, so the room
gradually cools down.
2.0 IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTROL SYSTEM IN THE AFOREMENTIONED
APPLICATION
The purpose of air conditioning system is to create comfort conditions by controlling the
temperature, humidity and flow of air inside the rooms. To maintain the comfort condition the air
conditioning system is equipped with control system: Temperature control. The temperature
control system functions to keep the air conditioning system to running smoothly and efficiently
throughout its operation. In this particular case, the temperature is measured by a suitable sensor
like thermocouple, RTD, thermistor or infra-red pyrometer and converted to a signal acceptable to
the controller (Garrett-Dyke, 2014)

The temperature control system helps in maintaining the efficiency air conditioner for
greater saving and comfort. It can determine the peak times that air conditioning is active and
operational, where more energy is consumed and when it will not be needed as much ("Why
HVAC Control Systems are Important for Every Building", 2019). For instance, we want the
temperature of the air conditioner to be decrease, the control system will detect the changes and
increase the flow rate of the refrigerant and eventually reduce the amount of energy consumed the
air conditioner. Apart from that, consider if the sensor of the air conditioning is malfunctioning
and fail to regulate the temperature the air conditioner, the air conditioner heating and cooling
system will run nonstop and causing rise in electric bills. The temperature control system can mean
remarkably save in energy costs in our daily life.

On top of that, the types of refrigerant that being used in this air conditioning system is R-
32, Difluoromethane. It absorbs heat from the room and leave the hot air out in the environment.
The R-32 refrigerant is a single component refrigerant where it is easier to reuse and recycle
compare to others refrigerant. According to Daiken, one of the leading AC manufacturer states R-
32 can reduce electricity consumption up to approximately 10% compared to air conditioner that
use R-22. Furthermore, the R-32 is one-third lower Global Warming Effect (GWP) compared to
R-22, which is hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCF) that can cause depletion in ozone layer.
3.0 METHODOLOGY CONTROL SYSTEMS INVOLVED AND HOW THE CONTROL
SYSTEM WORKS.
3.1 Methodology for simulation process of the control system for evaporator in air
conditioner

Refrigerant (R-32 Difluoromethane) is used as the coolant medium to provide

cool air as output of the air conditioning system. Heat exchanger is used in the
simulation to represent evaporator as it is simpler and use the same concept.

Advanced Peng-Robinson is used as the property package, the compound used,

pressure and temperature are specified for both streams as below:
1. Refrigerant Stream: (R-32) Difluoromethane, T=5°C, P=200 kPa
2. Stream 1: Air composition of Nitrogen and Oxygen, T=25°C, P=200 kPa

Both of the streams are then connected to Valve 1 and valve 2 respectively for
controlling purpose, next they are connected to the heat exchanger (E-1). Hence,
Controllers are installed to control flowrate of air and refrigerant temperature.

Tuning process is done by varying the values of OP minimum and maximum.

This step will determine the optimum valve opening of refrigerant stream to
achieve desired setpoint. Occasionally, the minimum and maximum value of PV
in air conditioner remote control are 17°C and 24°C respectively.

Next, the different values of Kc are tested to observe the settling time of the
controller to achieve set point and how much deviation range for set point that
can be used. The variation of Kc results is further discussed in result and
discussion part. Lastly the simulation is run to observe the working system.
3.2 How the control system involved works in air conditioner

The daily life application chosen for this project is the air conditioning system as the
evaporator in the air conditioner need to be controlled. In addition, air conditioning is a closed
system whereby in real life, the overall system involve evaporator, expansion valve, compressor
and condenser. However, since configuration of evaporator is quite complicated to be simulated
in ICON, it has been replaced by heat exchanger whereby they applied the same concept as
medium to exchange heat. As the heat follows the temperature gradient, the heat from air will be
absorbed by refrigerant that have lower feed temperature. The main equipment required for this
temperature control system in air conditioner are specified streams, valves, heat exchanger and
controller.

The first step for the flow of the system is when the warm air with temperature of 25°C
enter stream 1 (S1) while the refrigerant supplied in R-32 known as difluoromethane is used as it
is the common refrigerant for air conditioning system at temperature 5°C. Next, the setpoint for
this simulation for instance set from the remote control is 20°C. Then, the sensor located before
the valve at both streams will detect the temperature of inlet air and refrigerant and transmitted to
the temperature control TC-1 and TC-2 for valve 1 and valve 2 respectively. The temperature
control assigned in comparing the process temperature with the setpoint temperature desired by
the user and will decide opening of the valve for air and refrigerant stream, hence the controller
for air stream is set in reverse mode while for refrigerant stream is in direct mode. Therefore, If
the temperature detected at the air temperature is high, the controller will lower the opening of
valve 1 so that the flowrate of air inlet will decrease which will result in higher contact time of the
air with the refrigerant to exchange the heat. In other hand, controller of refrigerant will increase
the opening of valve 2 that will provide higher flowrate of refrigerant in heat exchanger.

Lastly, after tuning process of finding optimum OP value, the valve opening will remain
constant when the air temperature achieves desired setpoint. After that, the optimum value of
controller gain will be determined to get the deviation of set point value that can be used for higher
range of temperature of the minimum and maximum value of PV in air conditioner.
4.0 PROCESS FLOW SHEETING OF THE SYSTEM IN ICON PROCESS SIMULATOR
AND SIMULATION RESULTS USING ICON

Figure 4.0: Process flow diagram of the ICON simulation for the control system
5.0 DISCUSSION OF THE SIMULATION RESULTS
Controller gain or Kc is another way of expressing the "P" part of the PID controller.
GAIN = 100/(Proportional Band) (John Gerry, 2002). While Process Gain can be determined using
step test data, assigning a value for Controller Gain requires both specific knowledge of the PID
controller and the unique objective for the control loop (Inc., 2018). In this specific project, the
controller gain has been tuned to have the optimum time for the system to meet the setpoint. Since
there are two valves involved in this project, one controller should be used to control both valve
to the same setpoint value through cascade control. However, due to its complexity, two separate
controllers have been used in the ICON to control two different valves. The air entering the system
is assumed at 25℃ and the optimum setpoint is 20℃ according to normal air conditioner of
domestic use which have a range of 16℃ to 25℃. TC-1 is used to control the opening of VLC-1
which connected to the air inlet meanwhile TC-2 is used to control the VLV-2 which connected to
the inlet refrigerant. The opening of the both valves is set fixed in the project. The OP min of the
VLV-1 is set to 20% meanwhile its OP max is set to 45%. The OP max of VLV-2 is set to 30%
meanwhile its OP min is set to 15% at first. The system later was tested with different value of Kc
to know the optimum value of Kc which will give the optimum time taken for the system to meet
the setpoint. However, the OP min of the VLV-2 has changed to 10% after being tested with the
first Kc of 1 as below.

Figure 1: Strip chart of Kc =1

The time taken for the system to meet the set point when Kc used =1 is 511s. However,
the temperature of the system keeps dropping continuously even after it meet the setpoint.
Therefore, the valve opening of the VLV-2 which controlling the inlet refrigerant has been reduced
to 10% of opening. The changes made was expected to reduce the amount of refrigerant entering
the system to cool the air. Therefore, the temperature of the system supposed to have a steady
output after it meets the setpoint which is the 20℃. The system later was tuned using Kc = 0.75.

Figure 2: Strip chart of Kc =0.75

Using Kc of 0.75 has produced better time taken to reach the setpoint of 20℃ which is
337s. This shows that lower Kc has given better response time from the system. Therefore, the
tuning continued for Kc = 0.45 which supposed to have faster time taken to reach the setpoint.

Figure 3: Strip chart of Kc =0.45

However, the Kc used which is 0.45 has produced incredibly longer time taken to reach
the setpoint which is 921s. This has shown that the optimum value of Kc is located between the
0.75- 1. Hence, the system last tuning was tested using Kc = 0.85. The Kc of 0.85 has produced
the shortest time taken for the system to reach setpoint which is 288s. Therefore, it is the optimum
tuning found for the project. However, the tuning should be better and stable using cascade control
as purposed for the recommendation in this project over its complicity as one controller should be
able to control both valves involved.
6.0 CONCLUSION

Temperature control in air-conditioning refers to a process that is aimed at maintaining the

temperature in a given area at certain maximum or minimum level or within a certain range. This
process is commonly used in all parts of the world. Globalization and industrialization have further
necessitated the need for Temperature Control applications in various daily industrial activities.
Homes and Industries among other areas have parts of operation that must be maintained within a
certain temperature for process to work successfully, otherwise, the processes would not work or
would not be as efficient.

In this project, two separate controllers were used in the ICON to control two different
valves. The air entering the system is assumed at 25℃ and the optimum setpoint is 20℃ according
to normal air conditioner of domestic use which have a range of 16℃ to 25℃. The system was
tested with different values of Kc. When the Kc value tested was 1, the time taken for the system
to meet the set point was 511s. However, the temperature of the system kept dropping continuously
even after it meet the setpoint. After decreasing the Kc value to 0.75 it was observed that the system
took a much shorter time to meet the setpoint, taking merely 337s. From that observation, it was
inferred that the lower the Kc value the faster the response from the system, prompting a trial with
a Kc value of 0.45. But the results were not as expected as the system took an incredibly long 921s
to reach the setpoint.

Therefore, based on those 3 Kc values, it could be concluded that the optimum Kc was
somewhere in between 1 and 0.75. Based on the results obtained from further simulation trials, the
Kc value of 0.85 produced the shortest time for the system to reach the setpoint at 288s. Therefore,
that is the optimum tuning found for the project.
7.0 REFERENCES

1. Garrett-Dyke, C. (2014, March 13). What Is A Temperature Control System? Retrieved from
https://www.west-cs.com/news/what-is-a-temperature-control-system/.
2. Haines, R. W., & Hittle, D. (2003). Control systems for heating, ventilating, and air
conditioning. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers

3. Inc., C. S. (2018). Control Station. Retrieved from How Do I Calculate Gain? What Is the
Difference Between Process Gain and Controller Gain.

4. . John Gerry, P. (2002). Instrumentations. Retrieved from Glossary of Process Control

Terms:
https://www.idconline.com/technical_references/pdfs/instrumentation/Glossary_of_Process_Co
ntrol_Terms.htm
5. R-32Next-Generation Refrigerant. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.daikin.com/corporate/why_daikin/benefits/r-32/
6. Salim, M. (2010). International Series on SYSTEMS AND CONT ROL, Volume
8. Introduction to Control Systems.
7. Why HVAC Control Systems are Important for Every Building. (2019, August 20). Retrieved
from https://northbayheatingandair.com/why-hvac-control-systems-are-important-for-every-
building/
8. Woodford, M. (2019). Modeling Imprecision in Perception, Valuation and Choice. doi:
10.3386/w26258