Adaptive digital control system of flow rates for an OTEC plant

The purpose of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) plant control is to provide stable power efficiently by appropriately regulating the seawater flow rates and the working fluid flow rate under conditions of continually changing seawater temperatures. This paper describes digital control of working fluid flow rate based on an adaptive control theory for the "Imari 2" OTEC plant at Saga University. Provisions have been made for linkage between the software of the adaptive control theory and the hardware of the OTEC plant. In implementing the working fluid flow rate control, if persistency of excitation conditions are lost, the algorithm of identification often exhibits bursting phenomena. To avoid this difficulty, the stopping-and-starting rule for identification was derived and was used for the working fluid flow rate control. Satisfactory control performance was then obtained by using this digital control system.ol system.