Modeling and speed control design of an ethanol engine for variable speed gensets

•Development of a control oriented discrete Engine Mean Value Engine model.•Discretization and linearization of the crank based engine model.•Use of gain-schedule Proportional plus Integral controller for speed tracking.•Single and dual loop controller designs with feed forward and anti-windup actions.•Experimental tests and control validation results provided.

This paper presents the development of a discrete dynamic mean value engine model (MVEM) suitable for the design of speed controllers of ethanol fueled internal combustion engines (ICE), to be used in variable speed gensets. Two MVEMs are developed for the ICE: the Time Based model and the Crank Based model. The speed controller design is held through the discretization and linearization of the Crank Based MVEM. This model is used due to the advantages over the time based MVEM especially with respect to the transport delay which becomes constant. Two approaches for the ICE speed control are investigated: (i) a single loop gain-scheduled proportional integral (PI) controller and (ii) a dual loop control based on an internal gain-scheduled Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP) feedback loop and an outer loop composed of a gain-scheduled PI controller. The control design is developed in the frequency domain and its stability is ensured by the phase and gain margins. In addition, an integral anti-windup and a feed forward action are also proposed to improve the behavior during control law saturation, improve transient responses and disturbance rejection capability. Experimental results on a 50 kW generator set are provided to validate the controllers and to demonstrate the performance of the system.