Improving dual composition control in continuous distillation by a novel column design
✍ Scribed by Massimiliano Barolo; Claudio A. Papini
- Publisher
- American Institute of Chemical Engineers
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 216 KB
- Volume
- 46
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0001-1541
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
How a novel design of continuous distillation columns may impact the performance of conventional controllers when it is required to accurately control the purity of both products in a binary separation is analyzed. The proposed column layout is characterized by the presence of a middle vessel, to which two streams are fed: the liquid flow coming from the rectifying section and the feed to be separated. The actual liquid flow to the column is determined by the middle‐vessel level controller. For different control configurations and conventional proportional‐integral control, it is shown that using a middle‐vessel column provides a way to reduce the interaction between the composition loops, in such a way that the control performance of middle‐vessel columns may be made remarkably superior to that of the conventional columns. The results obtained are supported by a theoretical analysis based on the frequency‐dependent relative gain array tool.