A feedback control system with reference governor for a solar membrane distillation pilot facility

This work presents the development of a feedback control system for a pilot membrane distillation facility powered with solar energy located at Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA), Spain. The control system allows to fix a suitable operating temperature at the inlet of the distillation system, improving the operation quality. Four direct control schemes based on Proportional Integral (PI) controllers and Feedforward (FF) are designed as well as a reference governor which generates temperature references for the heat generation circuit direct control layer. Simulations and experimental tests are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.