A new Compensation with Advanced Control Methods for Boiler Combustion systems: LQR with Observer Design

We propose here a new comprehensive compensation technique for the $O_{2}$ % output of boiler no. 2 at Abbott Power Plant in Champaign, Illnois, USA. This compensation is applied to a sophisticated boiler dynamics which suffers from non-minimum phase behaviour phenomena. The control problem for this type of system is very difficult due to the sophistication of the system non-linearties and uncertainties. The system outputs are the drum level, drum pressure, and the $O_{2}$ %. This compensation is used in order to enhance the $O_{2}$ %, which is applied to the system using Linear Quadratic Regulator-LQR. The estimation of states used are Luenberger Observer, and Kalman Observer. The results show better results for LQR with Kalman filter estimator than the use of LQR with Luenberger Observer, but when the compensation is used the results from both are identical. A real-time simulation is used to simulate the system behaviour, and the controllers using MATLAB/Simulink environment.