Page 86 - IJEEE-2022-Vol18-ISSUE-1

Received: 05 February 2022 Revised: 03 March 2022 Accepted: 04 March 2022
DOI: 10.37917/ijeee.18.1.10
Vol. 18| Issue 1| June 2022
? Open Access

Iraqi Journal for Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Original Article

Design PI Controller for Tank Level in Industrial
Process

Anwer Abdulkareem Ali*, Mofeed Turky Rashid
Electrical Engineering Department, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq

Correspondence
* Anwer Abdulkareem Ali
Electrical Engineering Department,
University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq
Email: anwer.ali@uobasrah.edu.iq

Abstract
In today's chemical, refinery, and petrochemical sectors, separation tanks are one of the most significant separating processes.
One or more separation tanks must operate consistently and reliably for multiple facilities' safe and efficient operation.
Therefore, in this paper, a PI controller unit has been designed to improve the performance of the tank level controller of the
industrial process in Basrah Refinery Station. The overall system mathematical model has been derived and simulated by
MATLAB to evaluate the performance. Further, to improve the performance of the tank level controller, optimal PI parameters
should be calculated, which Closed-Loop PID Autotuner has been used for this task. Several experiments have been conducted
to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The results indicated that the PI controller based on the Autotuner Method
is superior to the conventional PI controller in terms of ease to implement and configuration also less time to get optimal PI
gains.
KEYWORDS: Tank level controller, Industrial process, Refinery Unit, PID controller, PID Autotuner.

I. INTRODUCTION or separation process within production units is that it is
extremely sensitive to input disturbances: temperature,
Tank level control is one of the most common concentration, level, and mass flow in the feed current all
applications in the industry [1-3]. In industry, several have a significant impact on flash separation efficiency. In
approaches and techniques for level control are used. It's this case, a thorough control system must be established to
necessary to keep track of liquid levels in process tanks [4]. decline the effects of stream vapor or liquid disruption. Level
Mass flow rate regulation is utilized in a range of (liquid phase) and pressure (vapor phase) are directly
technological applications, including steam generators in affected by changes in separation variation (how much liquid
power plants, reactors in several chemical industries, and and vapor flow from intake valve to flash tank) [8].
storage tanks in the oil and gas industry [5]. The tanks were
sized based on the fluid flow characteristics and rates that In refining and gas processing, the separation of liquids
would be observed. and particles from a gas stream is critical. The two controllers
can keep the level and temperature (and indirectly the
The liquid-phase hydrocarbon was the subject of pressure) around the intended levels during normal
research, and it was split into three stages. A two-phase operation, assuming that process equipment such as pressure
separator, which separates fluid into gas and liquid phases, sensors and valves are working properly [9]. However,
was used in the first step [6]. A two-phase vapor separator is several fault conditions may result in an unsafe situation in
a device that separates vapor from a vapor-liquid which excessively high pressure in the drum is obtained
combination using a density gradient. One of the most (possible causes of such unsafe conditions could include
important input facilities for oil refineries is phase faults in the top vapor effluent valve and the bottom liquid
separators. The combined-head streams' combined gaseous effluent valve that cause them to close) [10].
and liquid components are separated as part of the initial
petroleum refining [7]. Such separations are generally caused Recontacting Drum D5204(RD) is a separator vessel
by physical property changes in the fluid stream. There are used in Iraq's Basrah Refinery to boost gasoline output.
two or more phases with different compositions in Because the liquid leaving the tank towards the bottom
heterogeneous mixtures. Chemical reactions do not occur comprises a substantial amount of (reformate, LPG, and off-
between the components of these mixtures, and the stages' gas), liquid control is critical for this drum to retain these
borders are well defined. One of the drawbacks of the flash components available in the drum for other operations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2022 The Authors. Iraqi Journal for Electrical and Electronic Engineering by College of Engineering, University of Basrah.

https://doi.org/10.37917/ijeee.18.1.10 https://www.ijeee.edu.iq 82