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 ...

Good building mechanical design requires a firm grasp of the mechanical engineering fundamentals (thermodynamics, psychrometrics, the fan laws, etc.). The same can be said about the BAS design needed ...

PID loops are a central component of modulating boiler control systems with applications ranging from basic steam header pressure control to cascading 3-element drum level control. A modern ...

Control loop performance-monitoring software can help to improve loop performance at electric power plants by automatically collecting data, assessing several aspects of loop performance, and ...

On my first project as a combustion control engineer, I was responsible for loop checks and for watching the experts tune the system controls. The first loop I tried to tune solo was the drum level ...

Plant engineers and technicians are frequently asked to tune the controller when a control loop’s process value has prolonged or significant excursions from the set point. But in many instances, no ...

Power supplies use control-loop circuits to produce constant voltage or current. The transfer function—gain and phase as a function of frequency—provides valuable information about a control loop’s ...

Machines and processes are controlled using many strategies, from simple ladder logic to custom algorithms for specialized process control, but proportional-integral-derivative (PID) is the most ...