Modelling, identification and control of a calorimeter used for performance evaluation of refrigerant compressors

This paper presents the modelling, identification, and control of a calorimeter used for performance evaluation of refrigerant compressors. A phenomenological model of the process is developed and a simple linear model is obtained considering the dynamics near an operating point. Experimental results are also used to identify a simple linear model from real data. As the process exhibits an integrative behavior plus a dead time, a dead-time compensator specially designed for integrating plants is used to control the output temperature of the calorimeter. Robustness and implementation issues are discussed and experimental results in closed loop are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the controller.