Adaptive Fuzzy Logic Controller for Rotary Kiln Control

The Rotary Kiln forms the heart of the cement manufacturing plant where most of the energy is being consumed by the burning of clinker, which when powdered and mixed with gypsum gives cement. In order to assure acceptable qualities for the clinker, it is important to make sure that the raw meal fed to the rotary kiln has been properly burnt for which the temperature in the burning zone needs to be maintained at a specified range. Moreover, kiln exhibits a nonlinear behavior, which is time varying and has an inherent process lag, with complex multivariable interactions. Due to these reasons, world over, the kiln control operations are handled by expert plant operators and extreme importance is given for the control of sintering(clinkering) temperature. The multi-variable and nonlinear behavior of the kiln process makes it inadmissible for automatic control. The objective of the kiln control system is to ensure the production of desired quality clinker efficiently and to supply it to the cement mill uninterruptedly as per the demand. In this paper, a Fuzzy Logic Controller system is proposed to run on MATLAB, that translates the operators knowledge into membership functions that can well handle the operation of the kiln. The controller was compared with its SIMULINK model. The controller is then made adaptive by making it self-tuned even when their is a change in set point. Index Terms — Rotory kiln, FLC, Adaptive, Controller, Fuzzy Logic, MATLAB, SIMULINK, Clinker .