SENSOR-HEATING ELEMENT CONFIGURATIONS AND MULTI-LOOP CONTROL CYCLES FOR DRY-HEAT STERILIZERS

Methods and systems implement a dry-heat sterilizer configured to operate at temperatures permissive of a heat-intolerant articles and heat-intolerant packaging. To effectively and evenly transmit heat throughout a dry-heat sterilizer at such temperatures, the dry-heat sterilizer furthermore provides an electronic controller coupled to multiple sensor-heating element configurations, the electronic controller configured to compute proportional-integral-derivative (PID) terms to operate a multi-loop heat control cycle including at least a first feedback loop and a second feedback loop, and configured as an asymptotic PID controller for at least one feedback loop. In this fashion, the likelihood that spot airflow temperature at particular temperature sensors will overshoot a PID setpoint is substantially reduced. This results in spot airflow temperature at the temperature sensors being sustained at the PID setpoint asymptotically, substantially improving precision of heat control cycles.