Determination of PID Control Parameters of Plasmatron Plasma Reactor

The paper presents determination of PID controller parameters for application of plasmatron powered plasma reactor designed and build in Industrial Research Institute for Automation and Measurements. Plasma reactor is the key element of the test setup, designed to research, processing and recovery of metals from waste of electric and electronic equipment, focusing on electronic printed circuit boards. Experiment was carried out with power of 36 kW. In experiment two temperatures were measured in two points of the reactor chamber, allowing verification of thermal response. Basing on identification of thermal parameters of the plasma reactor carried out in previous paper [7], the PID controller was chosen, as suitable to control second order inertia object. Parameters of used PID controlled were determined using MATLAB-Simulink toolbox. Calculated PID model was utilized for plasma reactor parameters control, allowing examination of energy saving by reducing of plasmatrons power, and stabilization of process parameters.