A Study on IMC-based PID for Steam Distillation Process

PID controller had been widely accepted in industrial applications since decades. The PID algorithm even though is simple but yet, can produce satisfactory results. However, the efficiency of the PID controller is derived from a proper tuning of its parameters. There are no generic rules that can fulfill all the system design requirements. Due to that, PID tuning techniques are progressively being developed and refined by researchers in order to enhance the performance of PID control loop. Recently, an internal model control (IMC) tuning method had been introduced and been studied by many researchers. This paper adopts a version of IMC rules and simulated the response on a steam distillation for essential oil extraction process which is an FOPDT type model. The performance was compared to rule-based tuning methods, namely Ziegler-Nichols and AMIGO. The implementation of IMC tuning rules which are less sensitive to the accuracy of process parameters had attained better results compared to Ziegler Nichols and AMIGO based PID.