(444d) Effect of Tray Locations On Temperature Based Control Structures of Ideal Reactive Distillation Columns

Process intensification has been an area of growing interest in recent years. Reactive distillation columns are one of the well-known applications of process intensification in the chemical industry. The control structure selection is an important problem of reactive distillation columns. In the literature, dual temperature control structures are used for the inferential control of reactive distillation columns. Selection of the tray locations to temperature control have been performed using sensitivity analysis and singular value decomposition (SVD) method in the past decade. Recently, Kookos has presented a new methodology for the solution of tray selection problems, and applied it to a three temperature control structure of an ideal reactive distillation column with two reactants and two products [1].  

The aim of this study is making quantitative comparisons between dual and triple temperature control structures of reactive distillation columns using different tray selection approaches. The comparison will be made for two different types of reactive columns: (i) a two-reactant and two-product column, and (ii) a two-reactant, one product and one inert column. The control structures will be tested for disturbances in the production rate and feed stream compositions.

[1] Kookos, I.K., Control Structure Selection of an Ideal Reactive Distillation Column, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2011, 50, 11193-11200.