A novel adaptive generic model control strategy for internal thermally coupled air separation columns with multivariable recursive estimation

Abstract A gasification process is key in clean electricity production and decarbonization in an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant. The quality of the gasification process depends on the stability of the product-concentration streamed from the internal thermally coupled air separation column (ITCASC) unit. There is a need for a stable product-concentration supply to sustain clean electricity production. A proportional-integral-derivative control (PID) control and a nonlinear internal model control (NIMC) scheme are first explored to control the IGCC-ITCASC. Moreover, a robust generic model control (RGMC) is employed to deal with the IGCC-ITCASC inherent nonlinearity and strong interaction that make it very difficult to control. To obtain a satisfactory control performance, an adaptive generic model control (AGMC) with a multivariable recursive estimation is developed. The compared control systems show that AGMC can better handle both the system nonlinearity and strong interaction while improving the control performance.