Balance-based Adaptive Control of the Electric Flow Heater

This paper concentrates on the Balance-Based Adaptive Control (B-BAC) methodology and on its application to the control of the electric flow heater. The B-BAC methodology is dedicated for the control of a wide range of biochemical and heat exchange processes and the final form of the control law results from the general and simplified first-order model of a process, in which all unknown nonlinearities and modelling inaccuracy are replaced by the only one time-varying parameter. The value of this parameter is estimated on-line by RLS with very high accuracy and its application in the control law ensures the adaptability. The application of the B-BAController to the electric flow heater shows the generality of this methodology. The simulation results prove its very good control performance and robustness in spite of the fact that the complete nonlinear description of the system is unknown.