Control strategies for disturbance rejection in a solar furnace

This paper addresses the temperature control problem in a solar furnace. In particular, two control strategies for the rejection of disturbances (represented by the variation of the input energy provided by the Sun, mainly because of passing clouds) are proposed. The first one is based on Generalised Predictive Control, where a nonlinear model is employed for free response prediction while a linearised model is used for the computation of the forced response. The second one is a constrained control strategy where the process input and output constraints are taken into account explicitly. In both cases an adaptation of the most significant process parameter is performed. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the methodologies. © 2011 IFAC.