Optimal Design of Controllers for Brix Regulation in Sugar Industry

In the sugar industry, brix controller regulates the amount of dissolved sugar present in the solution and directly affects the quality of sugar being produced. Any deviations from the desired set-point will deteriorate the quality of sugar being produced and may indirectly impact the plant economy. The work emphasizes the optimal tuning of the PID controllers used for brix regulation in sugar plants. The plant dynamics are determined using system identification, and then optimal PID controller is synthesized using salp swarm algorithm. The efficacy of the designed controller has been compared against the PID controllers tuned using robust time response method and the optimal controllers obtained using genetic algorithm and simulated annealing. The obtained results have been compared, and it has been observed that the PID controllers tuned using salp swarm algorithm offer a good time and frequency domain behavior.