Implementation of a control electronics module for flow control valve based on FPGA

Abstract

Flow regulation is a major part of any process control involving fluid flow. Proportional valves form the major element for continuous variable fluid flow control. A proportional valve with movable conical profiled pintle, moving over a fixed orifice, actuated by a stepper motor cum linear actuator to regulate the fluid flow is our target process plant. An electronics module for controlling flow control valve using Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is proposed. There is great interest in exploiting these benefits in higher technological applications. The FPGA based controller receives the instantaneous flow requirement and translates it into number of pulses to the stepper motor cum linear actuator. The nonlinear mapping of flow to number of pulses to the stepper motor is implemented using FPGA.