Pressure and flow control of a pulverized coal injection vessel

This paper deals with model-based pressure and flow control of a fine coal injection vessel for the use of the blast furnace injection process. By means of system modeling aild identification, the structure and behavior of the coal injection vessel are analyzed. It is shown that by use of model-based design, the control goals can be reached and the control performance can be significantly improved compared to the conventional PI-controllers. Several dynamic models of the plant are developed. A number of control strategies are presented and compared by means of practical tests. The LQG design method is used to design the controllers. All the controllers are validated through experiments on the coal injection plant at SSAB Tunnplkt in Luleg, Sweden.