Abstract
The coupled tank system is the most widely used sub-component in chemical process industries. Fluid mixing is a major step in chemical processes that alters the material properties and cost. Fluid flow and its level regulation between several tanks are important control problems. As the first step, this paper addresses the level regulation problem using classical integer order proportional, derivative, integral (PID), fractional order PID controllers. As a second step, model-based robust fractional order controllers are derived using sliding mode approach in order to achieve the desired response, parameters of the proposed controllers are tuned using genetic algorithm. Finally, system performance under all variants of control schemes has been tested using numerical simulations.