Robust Control of an Evaporator Through Algebraic Riccati Equations and D-K Iteration Javier Jiménez-Cabas 1 , Farid Meléndez-Pertuz 1(&) , David Ovallos-Gazabon 2 , Jaime Vélez-Zapata 1 , Hermes E. Castellanos 3 ,César A. Cárdenas 3 , Joaquín F. Sánchez 3 , Gonzalo Jimenez 3 ,César Mora 4 , Fredy A. Sanz 3 , and C. A. Collazos 3 1 Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación y Electrónica, Universidad de la Costa, Barranquilla, Colombia fmelende1@cuc.edu.co 2 Departamento de Ingeniería de procesos Industriales, Institución Universitaria ITSA, Barranquilla, Colombia 3 Vicerrectoría de Investigaciones, Universidad Manuela Beltrán, Bogotá, Colombia 4 Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México DF, Mexico Abstract. Evaporation is a process that is widely used in the chemical industry and aims to concentrate a solution consisting of a non-volatile solute and a volatile solvent. In this paper the design of robust control systems for a simple effect evaporation system is presented. Two controllers were designed, the first was based on the Algebraic Riccati Equations (ARE) solutions technique and the second was derived from the D-K iteration method. To show the potentiality of the control system proposed, we present the results of some tests carried out in simulation. Keywords: Robust control  Single effect evaporator  Algebraic Riccati equations  D-K iteration 1 Introduction Evaporation is a technique widely used in industrial chemical processes and aims to concentrate a solution consisting of a non-volatile solute and a volatile solvent. Water is normally used as a solvent and the process consists in evaporating some of it in order to achieve the concentrated solution. Despite frequent use the various applications of evaporation processes in industry, it has been found that the control strategies currently used on these systems do not offer the best performance [1–3]. For this reason, it is essential to design a system that improves both performance and process control, making it increasingly ef ficient and secure. Robust control theory has experienced rapid development with the emergence of powerful tools for the design of control systems. Making possible the control of uncertain systems, and to develope controlled systems with ever better performances. A particular example is the techniques based on Riccati’s Algebraic Equations and the © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 S. Misra et al. (Eds.): ICCSA 2019, LNCS 11620, pp. 731–742, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24296-1_58