Power plants–especially coal-fired boilers–pose a set of process control problems unparalleled in other industries. Rapid load ramps, continuous unit demand changes, variable fuel quality and process ...

Every plant in the process industry most likely has several control loops that do not perform well. Although there are many factors that may negatively affect control loop performance, a few of these ...

Tuning a PID controller is pretty straightforward, once you know how to start and what steps to follow. In this series on motion control, we have already discussed permanent magnet brushed and ...

Designing the compensation network in a DC/DC converter can be a mystery if one does not know where to place the poles and zeros of the error amplifier and how much ...

Self-regulating systems with feedback loops, i.e., the routing back of the output of a system to its input, have existed since antiquity and have since become an integral part of modern technology.

Just over a decade ago, an article titled, "Advanced Control Strategies Move into the Field" (Control, October 2008), highlighted three evolving trends in the process control world that would "make ...

In my previous article on loop tuning, I discussed the importance of field data collection and the importance of a methodical approach to PID tuning. I introduced the concept of the bump test and how ...

At the core of any modern industrial process is a control system guaranteeing precision, stability, and efficiency. Perhaps the most commonly used are PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) ...