Advanced Control of Solar Plants (Advances in Industrial Control)

Product Description


The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies ... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. This volume by Professor Eduardo F. Camacho and his colleagues Manuel Berenguel and Francisco R. Rubio is an exemplar of what an Advances in Industrial Control monograph should be. In it the control of a thermal solar facility is used to study the performance obtainable from an interesting range of control algorithms. These methods range from the conventional PID controller, through to model-based predictive and robust optimal control methods and finishing with two fuzzy logic based control techniques. The scientific methodology applied is modelling, simulation and plant implementation. In the last chapter, a rigorous approach for a comparative study is described involving a careful selection of performance metrics. The text is rich in relevant up-to-date source material, and contains many thought-provoking comments. The presentation is well-balanced, impartial and very readable.


From the Back Cover


There is some degree of separation between the development of advanced control algorithms within the research community and their use in industrial practice. Several strategies developed from experimental research into improving the efficiency of solar thermal power plants are here examined in the context of their industrial application.
The techniques described and applied are:

modeling and simulation;
adaptive control;
model-based predictive control;
frequency domain control and robust optimal control; and
fuzzy logic control.

Their effectiveness in this control process is assessed and the various techniques' advantages and drawbacks are analyzed and compared. The results obtained can be readily extended to other industrial processes; in this context, the solar control process examined provides an ideal test-bed since it exhibits many of the problems found in other processes, such as nonlinearities, changing dynamics and strong external disturbances.
This is a comprehensive analysis of the practical application of different control strategies that will be of interest to control engineers working in solar power systems and throughout other process industries, and to researchers, scientists and graduate students in this field.
 
Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.