Controle fuzzy otimizado por algoritmo genético do nível de água e da pressão de uma caldeira de tubulão

Abstract

Faced with the constant technological evolutions that modern society experiences, industries have evolved more and more in search of greater efficiency and reliability of their processes. The search for new methods to optimize the industrial activities has fueled the interest in the development of research focused on this area. Despite the various technological developments that industries constantly undergo, steam remains present in their processes since the first industrial revolution, being used to perform movements in machines, which revolutionized the production process of the time. Nowadays its presence remains vast in different types of industry, being widely used for heating and electricity generation. The equipment used for steam generation is the boiler. In the process of generating steam in a boiler, there are two variables of great importance for control, which are the water level and the steam pressure in the drum. The control of these variables guarantees the operational safety of the machine and compliance with the process parameters through the required steam pressure. Thus, the boiler control problem is of great interest in academia and industry. In order to control the variables reported, it is basically necessary to act on the water supply and saturated steam exit valves of the drum. Based on this, this work aims to control the water level and pressure in the drum of a water-tube boiler through artificial intelligence in order to avoid unwanted variations in level and pressure when going through load variations. To this end, fuzzy controllers optimized by genetic algorithm are used. Tests were performed for the model and their results were satisfactory.