Advice for Auber Temperature Controller settings?

I'm using an Auber SYL2342 to control a Blichmann LP burner for mashing. The TC controls a solenoid valve to turn the burner on and off with a standing pilot. TC configuration is At=0 (on/off mode), Cool=10, Hy=0.3 and t=5 sec. I'm experiencing two to three degree F overshoot and temperature variation. Not the end of the world for mashing, but I was wondering if anyone may have some suggestions for settings changes that might tighten up my accuracy...mash volume is ~14 gallons.

Thanks, grateful for any advice or experience you might want to share...

IMO, this is going to happen with gas. Im building my system right now with this in mind. Are you direct fire on the mash to maintain temp? Since we have to operate in on/off, we dont get the advantage of the pid learning our system to correct for overshoot. I think the best you can hope for is to set it a couple degrees lower than you want it. My plan is a large amount of water in the hlt and circulating through the hermes coil. Should be able to maintain temp easier that way.

bucfanmike said:

IMO, this is going to happen with gas. Im building my system right now with this in mind. Are you direct fire on the mash to maintain temp? Since we have to operate in on/off, we dont get the advantage of the pid learning our system to correct for overshoot. I think the best you can hope for is to set it a couple degrees lower than you want it. My plan is a large amount of water in the hlt and circulating through the hermes coil. Should be able to maintain temp easier that way.

Click to expand...

Plan A was to direct fire the mash kettle while recirculating...

Plan B is now to take your advice and recirculate through a HERMS coil in the HLT...but this raises a couple new questions...

Do you turn the HERMS pump on and off to regulate mash temperature?

Do you run the HLT hotter than the mash temperature to get some heat transfer efficiency?

Thanks for the help!

Based on Auber's suggestion, I tried setting the control period t=20 and ran auto-tune to set the PID parameters (At=2)...works pretty good now with minimal overshoot, +- 1*F on the first approach to the set point. The number of solenoid operations doesn't seem to be any more or less than I was getting in on/off mode.
So I'm back to Plan A (direct firing the mash kettle). Another thing that I found is keeping the burner at a medium-low setting(ie keeping the temperature rise moderate) helped to keep the overshoot smaller to begin with.

Blichmann's Tower of Power mash controller looks like it operates on the same principal. Based on their set-up, I moved the controlling RTD from the interior of my MLT to the output of the recirculation pump. I think that helped as well

Are the T-20 and AT-2 the only settings you changed from the default Auber settings? I just finished wiring up my control panel and I'm just about ready to fire my unit up (fingers crossed that everything works). Any advice you can give would be awesome.

I set the input type (Sn) = 21 since I'm using RTD's.
Setting At=2, I ran auto tune using water for the first run. The controller cycles through (3) on/off cycles and automatically sets the PID values. This can take a some time, especially if you have a real efficient mash tun that cools down slowly . It also took several tries running AT to get some PID values that limited overshoot. I think the key to getting good PID values with AT are:
-Keep the burner at a moderate level to keep temperature rise under control
-Locate your control sensor at the output of your recirc pump, right before the flow reenters the mash tun.
-keep your recirculation flow as high as you can

Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes.