CONTROL STRATEGIES FOR CORN MIXED-FLOW DRYERS

This paper relates work which has been conducted in order to obtain a control strategy for French mixed-flow dryers. Special emphasis is giv en to the system analysis (static and dynamic). Potential difficulties for the dryer control are: non-linearities, long delay, high order, h igh disturbances. Special emphasis is also made on the importance of s ignal pre-processing. Then, different control strategies are compared on a simulation basis : classical PI, pole-placement and non-linear PI controllers. The conclusion is experimentally based.