On mill flow rate and fineness control in cement grinding circuits: instability and delayed measurements

A control structure for the mill flow rate and the product fineness is designed, with the feed flow rate and the classifier characteristic as the manipulated variables. Experimental results from a plant highlight the instability of the grinding circuit. A model previously developed by the authors stresses the major influence of the classifier nonlinearities onto this instability. A cascade control structure has been designed and implemented on site. The measurements of the product fineness, sensitive to material grindability fluctuations, are randomly time-delayed. The control structure uses a fineness estimator based on an adaptive scheme and a time delay compensator. (author)