Design of Effective Control Schemes for Binary Distillation Columns

Abstract

Distillation column is very important and high consuming energy equipment in oil refineries, such that 3% of the energy consumption in the world is allocated in distillation column. The fact that let controlling the distillation column an attractive field for researcher, and hence different control schemes are proposed by researchers. In this paper we will provide a comparative study between different control schemes for a binary distillation column two simple configurations (the most known ones) (LV&DV) and two more complicated ones ((L/D,V/B) & Ryskamp’s) we compare them in the basis of interactions and disturbance propagation. The mathematical models for the material balance configurations for the considered configurations are deduced using mathematical transformations (in the paper the general case of transformation between any two configurations is presented), taking the conventional configuration (LV) as a based configuration, the Dynamic Relative Magnitude Criterion (DRMC) is used to assess the interactions and disturbance propagation. The results show that the ratios control schemes are less sensitive to interactions compared with energy balance configuration LV. The same was noticed with DV configuration however other process drawbacks let it not recommended in industrial field.