A modified controller design based on symbiotic organisms search optimization for desalination system

Abstract

Abstract Fresh water demand is growing drastically in many parts of the world. Desalination of seawater, brackish water, and waste water is one solution to meet the demands of fresh water. Currently, reverse osmosis (RO) desalination process is one of the best methods for the desalination process. In this study, a modified controller design is proposed for RO desalination system based on symbiotic organisms search (SOS) algorithm. A multivariable model of RO desalination plant is considered for experimentation. The RO system considered here is first decoupled using a simplified decoupling process to obtain two non-interacting loops. Then, a proportional-integral-derivative controller with second order derivative (PID-DD) scheme based on SOS algorithm is proposed for each loop to find optimal control parameters of the RO system. To design the PID-DD controller for each loop, integral of squared error (ISE) is considered as fitness function. Four other state-of-the-art optimization algorithms, namely, teacher-learner-based-optimization (TLBO), differential evolution (DE), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and artificial bee colony (ABC), algorithms are also tested for the considered system. To show competitiveness of the proposed SOS-based PID-DD controller, a comparative study based on time domain analysis is performed. Results show the SOS-based PID-DD controller is superior to other PID-DD controllers.