Tuning Practice 7 — Temperature — steam coil, control valve

The job

What you are looking at

A control valve admits steam to a coil inside a vessel. The coil heats up, and the coil heats the contents. That is two thermal lags in series, plus a few seconds of transport dead time before anything the valve does reaches the temperature element. Process flow through the vessel is the load — more flow carries more heat away.

This measurement is clean. There is no noise on it at all.

The controller is on factory defaults and the acting direction has not been commissioned. All three tuning terms are unlocked, including rate.

This is practice, not a test. Nothing on this page is scored and nothing is submitted anywhere. Judge your tuning by the trend in front of you: how quickly the measurement reaches the setpoint, how far past it goes, whether it settles, and how the loop behaves when the load changes. Change something, watch it, change it again.

How to work through it

Steps

Press Start. The loop begins balanced at setpoint, so nothing will move until you disturb it — move the setpoint, or change the load, and watch which way the measurement goes. This loop is slow — give it time, or raise the simulation speed.
Set the acting direction for this loop.
Tune it with proportional and reset first. Move the setpoint and watch how far the temperature overshoots and how long it takes to settle.
Now add rate and repeat the same setpoint move. Compare the two responses and keep whichever you would rather leave in the controller.
Before you call it tuned, change the load and confirm the loop brings the measurement back and holds it. A loop that only looks good on a setpoint move is not proven.

All three tuning terms are available on this exercise, including the derivative (rate) term.

Adjustment range available for each tuning term on this exercise
Tuning term	Lowest	Highest
Proportional gain (Kp)	0	5
Integral gain (Ki, 1/s)	0	0.11
Derivative gain (Kd, s)	0	19

These ranges are set for this loop only. Another exercise will have different ones, because a different process needs different numbers.

Simulator

For your own record

Commissioning notes

Nothing here is graded or sent anywhere. Write down what you settled on and why, so you have it to compare against the next exercise.

Which way did this controller have to act, and how did you work that out? What did you leave the tuning set to? Record the numbers themselves, in whichever form the controller was showing them. What did the loop do when you changed the load, and were you satisfied with the recovery?

Your notes stay in this browser, on this computer, and they belong to this exercise alone — each exercise keeps its own set. Open this exercise again on this computer and they will be here waiting for you. They are not sent anywhere and they are not graded, and they will not follow you to another machine, so copy anything you want to keep elsewhere.