Comparison of PID Control and Linear Model Predictive

Control Application to Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer System

Sasita Anucha1, Vasit Chayavivatkul2 and David Banjerdpongchai3
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University,
254 Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330 Thailand Tel: +662-2186487, Fax: +662-2518991
Email: 1piglet_yores@hotmail.com, 2vasitbill@gmail.com, 3bdavid@chula.ac.th (corresponding author)

Abstract: Process control applications have significantly contributed to the development of the industrial sector.
A regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) is a treatment process of exhaust air. The system absorbs heat from the exhaust
gas and uses the captured heat to preheat the incoming gas stream and destroy air pollutants emitted from process
exhaust streams at high temperatures. In order to regulate the gas stream output, temperature control loop is an
important requirement. Nowadays, temperature control of RTO is still using conventional PID control. Tuning of PID
parameters are straightforward and simple, but its control performance is limited. Moreover, PID design for multi-input
multi-output systems is complicated and cannot ensure the performance. This motivates the development of model
predictive control (MPC) which is one of advanced process control techniques. This paper presents an application of
PID control and model predictive control designed for RTO system. The performance of linear MPC is compared to PID
control of RTO system. Effects of each control parameter are also obtained. Simulation results indicated that linear MPC
provides better transient performance.

1. INTRODUCTION nonlinear characteristic and employing PID controller can

A regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) is an industrial
process for the treatment of exhaust air. The system uses
ceramics material to absorb heat from the exhaust gas. It
then uses the captured heat to preheat the incoming
process gas stream and destroy air pollutants emitted from
process exhaust streams at high temperatures [1].
Temperature control is an important task for RTO.
Although most of industrial processes are still using
conventional control which is PID control, its
performance is limited especially in nonlinear plants. This
motivates the development of model predictive control
(MPC) which is one of advanced process control
techniques. Linear MPC is developed in order to deal with
multivariable system and process constraints [2].
MPC provides a consistent, model-based intelligence
layer to assist minute-to-minute operator decisions that
affect overall plant and production performance. In
contrast to capital changes designed to improve the energy
equation, such as installing a supplemental regenerative
thermal oxidizer (RTO) or an additional centrifuge, MPC
solutions reside on top of existing systems and can be
installed in a relatively short timeframe without a plant
shutdown [3].
The previous research on industrial pressure control
loop [4] shows that MPC based on linear dynamic model
outperforms PID controllers in terms of settling time and
maximum overshoot. MPC is more robust to multiple
changes in the system dynamics and the varying time
delay while PID control would need adjustment of its
parameters for any of the changes during the system
operation [5]. For the RTO system, the relationship
between temperature and flow rate through combustion air
valve is nonlinear, and the flow rate is a function of valve
position [6]. Therefore, the temperature control loop has a
result in poor performance. This leads to the development
of MPC with a use a dynamic model in optimization and
to improve process performance [7].
This paper aims to design linear MPC for the RTO
process which contributes stability and performance of the
system. The main contribution of this paper is to serve the
industries which are involved with RTO with a more
optimal controller. This might not only make the
companies waste less time with the process but also make
them gain more profits. For simulation, control parameters
are varied in order to analyze the effect of each control
parameter on the MPC. The performance of linear MPC is
compared to PID controller.
The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, model
predictive control is described. The RTO and
identification of process are given in section 3. In
section 4, the simulation of RTO system with PID
controller. In section 5, we illustrate results of linear MPC
and compare with that of PID control. Conclusions are
given in section 6.
2. MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL
The term Model Predictive Control (MPC) does not
designate a specific control strategy but a very ample
range of control methods which make an explicit use of a
model of the process to obtain the control signal by
minimizing an objective function. Normally, the standard
MPC process composes of three steps: future state/output
prediction, objective function optimization and control
signal implementation. The model is the corner stone
which is used to explicitly generate the future state/output
prediction based on the control implementation and the
values up to the instant time. The optimizer block is used
to generate the control signal implementation based upon

978-1-4799-7862-5/15/$31.00 © 2015 IEEE

the specific objective function optimizzation and the
predefined constraints [8]. The main objecctive of MPC is
to minimize a performance criterion in thhe future that is
possibly subjected to constraints on thhe manipulated
inputs and outputs, where the future behavvior is computed
according to the model of the plant [9].
Using the state variables, the mathemattical model of a
linear dynamic system can be expressed in the form of the
discrete-time state equation [9].
‫ݔ‬ሺ݇ ൅ ͳሻ ൌ ‫ݔܣ‬ሺ݇ሻ ൅ ‫(ݑܤ‬kk)
‫ݕ‬ሺ݇ሻ ൌ ‫ܥ‬x(k)
where x is state variable, u is control input aand y is
performance output, A, B, and C are constaant matrices
with appropriate dimension.
The basic MPC’s structure is shown in Fig. 1 and the
MPC’s scheme is shown in Fig. 2.
where u ( k i + j ) is the control output
o at the time k i + j
and N c is control horizon, R is tuning parameter which
represents the weighing of the conttrol output.
3. REGENERATIVE THE
ERMAL OXIDIZER
3.1 Description
RTO is an industrial processs for the treatment of
exhaust air. The system uses a bed of ceramic material to
(1) absorb heat from the exhaust gas. It then uses this
(2) captured heat to preheat the incom
ming process gas stream
and destroy air pollutants emittedd from process exhaust
streams at high temperatures. Temmperature is controlled to
be not too high and also not to oo low due to machine
damages, when the temperature iss too high and much air
pollution when the temperature is too
t low [5].
Fig. 3 shows the piping and instrumentation
i diagram
involved in the temperature conttrol loop of RTO. Two
inputs are combustion valve K4.01(%) and combustion
valve K7.06(%). One input is th he velocity of fan V2.
Temperature transmitter (TT) meaasures the temperature in
vessel and then sends this data too temperature controller
(TC) which will calculate a prop per output control signal
for controlling valve K4.01 [6].

Fig. 1. MPC’s structure.

Fig. 3 P&I diagram of RTO system.

Fig. 2. MPC’s scheme.
Consider the objective function used to m
between predicted output and reference [6].
J = ( Rs − Y )T ( Rs − Y ) + ΔU T RΔU
where
Rs = [1 1 ! 1]1× N × r ( ki ) ,
p
3.2 Dynamic Model
A dynamic model is found d by applying System
Identification Tool using Prediction Error Minimization
(PEM) method [10,11]. The difference
d between the
estimation data and the validatio on data is used as the
selection criteria. The percentage of best fit accuracy of
the simulation output is 80.5% [66]. Comparison between
minimize errors the measured output and predicted d output of RTO system
is shown in Fig. 4.
(3)
(4)

r ( k i ) is reference signal at the time ki and N p is prediction

horizon.
T
Y = ª¬ y (ki + 1| ki ) y ( ki + 2 | ki ) " y ( ki + N p | ki ) º¼ (5)
where y ( k i + j | k i ) is the predicted output of dynamic
model at the time k i + j given the output aat the time k i
T Fig. 4 Comparison between th
he measured output and
ΔU=ª¬u(ki )−u(ki −1) u(ki +1)−u(ki ) " u(ki +Nc −1)−u(ki +Nc −2)º¼ (6) predicted outtput
By using zero-order hold method, we obtain the Table 1 Performances of RTO system with PID
continuous-time transfer function. control using IAE and ISE tuning methods.
0.09972 s 3 + 0.0644 s 2 + 0.01031s + 0.001265
P (s ) = (7)
s + 0.06081s 3 + 0.1013s 2 + 0.001932 s + 0.0001372
4

The discrete time transfer function of RTO system with

sampling time 10 seconds is as follows [5].
2.242 z 2 − 0.673z + 0.5128
P (z ) = (8)
z − 0.8922 z 2 − 0.5534 z + 0.6713
3

The model of RTO can be represented by the following

discrete time state space model.
ͲǤͷ͸Ͳͷͳ െͲǤ͵ͺͷ͵ െͲǤͶͳͺʹ͸ െͲǤͲ͵ʹͺʹͶ
‫ݔ‬ሺ݇ ൅ ͳሻ ൌ ൥ ͲǤ͵Ͳͳͺͻ ͲǤͺͻͺͶ͹ െͲǤͳ͵͸͹ʹ൩ ‫ݔ‬ሺ݇ሻ ൅ ൥ െͲǤͳͷ͸ͷ͵ ൩ ‫ݑ‬ሺ݇ሻ (9)
െͲǤ͹͸ͺͲͻ െͲǤͳͺͶͷͳ െͲǤͷ͸͸͹Ͷ െͲǤͲͻʹʹ͸ͺ
‫ݕ‬ሺ݇ሻ ൌ  ሾͳʹǤ͸͸Ͷ െͳͲǤͷͺͻ െͳͲǤͺ͵͹ሿ‫ݔ‬ሺ݇ሻ (10)

Temperature [Celsius]
4. RESULTS WITH PID CONTROL
We employ two tuning techniques using SISOTOOL
from MATLAB to find appropriate PID controller [10,11].
They are Integral of Absolute Error (IAE) and Integral of
Square Error (ISE). Simulated process response of RTO
system and control input of PI and PID controller
designed by IAE method and ISE method are shown in Valve [%]
Fig. 5. From the numerical experiments, we find that the
best PID parameters are Kp = 0.0415, Ki = 0.0149, Kd =
0.041, which are designed by IAE method. The
performance of RTO step response with PI and PID Fig. 6 Simulated process response of RTO system and
controllers designed by IAE and ISE methods is control input of PID control designed by IAE method and
summarized in Table 1. We note that PID control designed ISE method.
by IAE method gives the least settling time of 546 sec.
and the smallest maximum overshoot of 5.06%. Moreover, 5. RESULTS WITH LINEAR MPC
we calculate the norm of control input and error. It is
found that PID control designed by IAE method gives In this study, appropriate MPC parameters, namely, R ,
smaller norm of control input, whereas PI control Np, and Nc, are selected. First, we vary the weight
designed by ISE method give smaller norm of error. parameter R from 10, 15 to 20 whereas Np = 20, Nc = 5.
Simulated process responses of RTO system and control The simulated responses are shown in Fig. 7. It can be
inputs of PID controller designed by IAE method and ISE seen that the process output responds faster when R is
method are shown in Fig. 6. small. This is due to the fact that the first term of Eq. (3)
becomes dominant when R is small. As a result, the
output performance is better when R is decreased.
Temperature [Celsius]
Valve [%]

Fig. 5 Simulated process response of RTO system and

control input of PI and PID control designed by IAE Fig. 7 Simulated process response of RTO system and
method and ISE method. control input when varying weight parameter.
 Weight parameter R = 5 is experimented to assure that
the output performance of system when R is less than 10
is very similar to when the output performaance of system
when R is equal to 10. Comparison of prrocess responses
when R =5 and R = 10 is shown in Fig. 88.
Fig. 8 Comparison of process responses whhen R =5 and R
=10
Temperature [Celsius]
Valve [%]
Fig. 9 Simulated process response of RTO O system and
control input when varying predictionn horizon.
Temperature [Celsius]
Valve [%]
Fig. 10 Simulated process response of RT
TO system and
control input when varying control hhorizon.
Next, we vary prediction horizon Np from 5, 10 to 20
whereas Nc = 5, R = 10. Simulation results are shown in
Fig. 9. It can be seen that the output responnds faster when
Np is large. This results from the largerr dimension of
output vector Y that contains preddicted output. The larger
dimension of output vector involves with the objective
function and let the magnitude of elements in ¨U to
become larger. As a result, the output performance is
better when prediction horizon is larger.
Lastly, we vary control horizon Nc from 5, 10 to 15,
while Np = 20, R =10. Simulatio on results are shown in
Fig. 10. It can be seen that the output
o responds slightly
slower when Nc is large. This results from the larger
dimension of ¨U that contains the control input. When the
dimension of control input is larg ger, the optimal control
energy is distributed over the lonnger period of time [6].
Norm of ¨U is slightly reducing g. The process responds
slightly faster when control horizo
on is small.
From the simulation, we find that the best choice of
design parameters are Nc = 5, Np = 20 and R =10.
The comparison between PID D controller and linear
MPC is shown in Fig. 11. It can n be seen that the linear
MPC has better performance with h less settling time, rise
time and maximum overshoot. The comparison of
performances between PID contro oller and linear MPC is
shown in Table 2.
Temperature [Celsius]
Valve [%]
Fig. 11 Comparison of process ressponses with controllers
designed by PID and linear
l MPC.
Table 2 Comparison of performannces between using PID
control and linearr MPC.
 6. CONCLUSIONS
This paper is mainly focused on PID control and linear
MPC with application to temperature control loop for
RTO system. The feature of MPC is to minimize a
performance criterion in the future that would possibly be
subject to constraints on the manipulated inputs and
outputs. The variation of control parameters are also
simulated and discussed. These results show that properly
adjusting control parameters can improve overall
performance. The simulation results show that linear MPC
has better performance than PID controller designed by
IAE tuning method. However, nonlinear MPC may
provide a better performance compared to linear MPC
since the plant model is nonlinear. Therefore, design and
simulation of nonlinear MPC is important. It is an ongoing
work which needs further studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The research facility is supported by the Dept. of
Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Chulalongkorn University.
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