Systematic Control Approach for the Petlyuk Distillation Column

D. ZUMOFFEN; G. MOLINA; L. NIETO; M. BASUALDO

Proceedings of the 18th IFAC World Congress

IFAC

Lugar: Roma; Año: 2011; p. 8552 - 8557

This work focuses on the challenging process called Petlyuk distillation column. This plant has interesting properties for reducing the energy consumption up to 30% and the capital investment cost. However the dynamic control of the divided-wall column has been explored in a relatively small number of papers. The control problem is more dificult here since the six sections of the column are coupled. In this work, the control problem is addressed systematically by determining the optimal number of controlled variables (optimal sensor location, OSL) and the control structure design (CSD), simultaneously. It is done by grouping both problems in a single procedure called minimum squared deviation (MSD). This strategy considers both set points and disturbances eect, and the interaction in the controller structure (diagonal, full or sparse) is taking into account, via net load eect (NLE) index, for deciding the best one. A comparison of the dynamic controllability with two other strategies such as self-optimizing control and null space method is presented here.