This paper aims to propose a quantitative tuning method for active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) that controls the K/(Ts+1)n-type high-order processes. An asymptote in the Nyquist curve has been observed for the first time and its mathematical expression has been deduced. An asymptote condition is provided in order to derive a parameter tuning rule under the sensitivity constraint. Although this proposed tuning rule is originally designed for a certain type of high-order processes, it can be extended to other types processes that can be approximated into the form of K/(Ts+1)n. Comparisons with different PID control strategies have been conducted for a range of cases to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed tuning method. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed tuning rule is experimentally verified on water tank system that exhibits high-order dynamics. Field tests on the superheater steam temperature control of a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) power plant further demonstrate its potential for applications in complex industrial processes.

The increasing energy demand and the changing of energy structure have imposed higher requirements on the conventional large-scale power plants control. Complexity of the power plant processes and the frequent change of operation condition make the accurate physical models hard to obtain for control design. To this end, a data-driven control strategy, the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) has received much attention for the estimation and mitigation of uncertain dynamics beyond the canonical form of cascaded integrators. However, the robustness of ADRC is seldom discussed in a quantitative manner. In this study, the maximum sensitivity is used to evaluate and then constrain the robustness of ADRC applied to high-order processes. Firstly, by using the new idea of the vertical asymptote of the Nyquist curve, a preliminary one-parameter-tuning method is developed. Secondly, a quantitative relationship between the maximum sensitivity and the tuning parameter is established using optimization methods. Then, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method is initially verified in the total air flow control of a power plant simulator. Finally, field tests on the secondary airflow control in a 330 MWe circulating fluidized bed confirm the merit of the proposed maximum sensitivity-constrained ADRC tuning.

Superheated steam temperature (SST) is a significant index for a coal-fired power plant. Its control is becoming more and more challenging for the reason that the control requirements are stricter and the load command changes extensively and frequently. To deal with the aforementioned challenges, previously the cascade control strategy was usually applied to the control of SST. However, its structure and tuning procedure are complex. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a single-loop control strategy for SST based on a hybrid active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). The stability and ability to reject the secondary disturbance are analyzed theoretically in order to perfect the theory of the hybrid ADRC. Then a tuning procedure is summarized for the hybrid ADRC by analyzing the influences of all parameters on control performance. Using the proposed tuning method, a simulation is carried out illustrating that the hybrid ADRC is able to improve the dynamic performance of SST with good robustness. Eventually, the hybrid ADRC is applied to the SST system of a power plant simulator. Experimental results indicate that the single-loop control strategy based on the hybrid ADRC has better control performance and simpler structure than cascade control strategies. The successful application of the proposed hybrid ADRC shows its promising prospect of field tests in future power industry with the increasing demand on integrating more renewables into the grid.

The maximum sensitivity function as the conventional robustness index is often used to test the robustness and cannot be used to tune the controller parameters directly. To reduce analytical difficulties in dealing with the maximum sensitivity function and improve the control performance of the proportional-integral-derivative controller, the relative delay margin as a good alternative is proposed to offer a simple robust analysis for the proportional-integral-derivative controller and the first-order plus dead-time systems. The relationship between the parameters of the proportional-integral-derivative controller and the new pair, e.g., the phase margin and the corresponding gain crossover frequency, is derived. Based on this work, the stability regions of the proportional-integral-derivative controller parameters, the proportional gain and the integral gain with a given derivative gain, are obtained in a simple way. The tuning of the proportional-integral-derivative controller with constraints on the relative delay margin is simplified into an optimal disturbance rejection problem and the tuning procedure is summarized. For convenience, the recommended parameters are also offered. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methodology has better tracking and disturbance rejection performance than other comparative design methodologies of the proportional-integral/proportional-integral-derivative controller. For example, the integrated absolute errors of the proposed proportional-integral-derivative controller for the tracking performance and disturbance rejection performance are less than 91.3% and 91.7% of the integrated absolute errors of other comparative controllers in Example 3, respectively. The proposed methodology shows great potential in industrial applications. Besides, the proposed method can be applied to the design of the proportional-integral-derivative controller with filtered derivative which is recommended for practical applications to weaken the adverse influence of the high-frequency measurement noise.

Supercritical circulating fluidized bed (CFB) is one of the prominent clean coal technologies owing to the advantages of high efficiency, fuel flexibility, and low cost of emission control. The fast and flexible load-tracking performance of the supercritical CFB boiler-turbine unit presents a promising prospect in facilitating the sustainability of the power systems. However, features such as large inertia, strong nonlinearity, and multivariable coupling make it a challenging task to harmonize the boiler’s slow dynamics with the turbine’s fast dynamics. To improve the operational flexibility of the supercritical CFB unit, a burning carbon based decentralized active disturbance rejection control is proposed. Since burning carbon in the furnace responds faster than throttle steam pressure when the fuel flow rate changes, it is utilized to compensate the dynamics of the corresponding loop. The parameters of the controllers are tuned by optimizing the weighted integrated absolute error index of each loop via genetic algorithm. Simulations of the proposed method on a 600 MW supercritical CFB unit verify the merits of load following and disturbance rejection in terms of less settling time and overshoot.