Intelligent Control of Air Compressor Production Process

The air compressor provides not only the required pressure air for the cooling equipment and refrigeration plant, but also the raw material required for the air separation plant. Utilizing the air compressor is extremely extensive in many significant departments such as the metallurgy, oil and chemical industry. The air compressor production process is a time-varying, delay and nonlinear complex system and gas consumption in the industrial field is irregular. Defects in the traditional control method lead to the pressure instability of the compressed air outputted from the air compressor in volatile gas-consumption situations, sometimes a wide range of fluctuation arising. Therefore, the working state of the air compressor becomes unstable. It results in both a waste of resources and greater energy consumption. Therefore, guaranteeing the output pressure of the air compressor system steady is extraordinarily significant for improving efficiency and saving energy for the overall air separation system. DCS control technology applied to the system, the ECS-700 system of SUPCON was utilized into configuring the air compressor system and monitoring real-time values of important parameters in the various components. According to the working characteristics of the air compressor system, a fuzzy pressure controller and an intelligent control method based on the fuzzy PID were proposed. The simulation results showed that the control effect was extraordinarily satisfactory and effective. It can offer a certain meaning of guidance and reference for the control of other equipment in air separation systems.