Modeling and control strategies for heating processes in the glass industry

In glass industry, the energy for the manufacturing process plays an important role for the productivity of the plant. Till now, the process is mainly controlled based on experience of the operators. In the paper a method is presented for deriving optimized feedforward control strategies resulting in reference temperature profiles for the plant control. Therefore a dynamic model based on partial differential equation as an approximation for the glass feeder gate is derived. Measurements show a good agreement to the simulation model behavior. Next step is the development of a feedforward control based on an approach via a flat system description in combination with optimization techniques. The obtained result was an advantageous temperature profile, which leads to a reduction of gas consumption at the plant of approximately 6 to 8 %.