Drive torque actuation in active surge control of centrifugal compressors

A novel approach to active surge control is presented for a centrifugal compressor driven by an electrical motor. The main idea of the paper is to use the drive itself for surge control. This eliminates the need for additional actuators, and has the potential of energy efficient operation. It is shown that previous unstable operating points to the left of the surge line can be made globally exponentially stable by using the rotational speed of the motor as control. It is then shown that stability and exponential convergence to a set follows when the torque of the drive is considered to be the control input, The proposed method is simulated on a compressor model using an approximation of a real compression system. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.