SYNTHESIS OF MICRO-COMPUTER BASED CONTROL SYSTEM FOR A DISTILLATION COLUMN

Abstract

Distillation is one of the important and large energy consuming unit operations used widely in chemical and . petrochemical industries. With the continuous increase on material and energy price, it has become imperative to use efficient and robust control system for diatillation columns. However, design of control system for distillation is not simple and straightforward since'the process is multivariable and interactive in nature. The design methods require the parameters of the model that describe the dynamic behaviour of the process. In the present work , an effort has been made to cover the aspects of the dynamic behaviour of distillation columns and synthesis of control system. The objective of the distillation is to keep the composition of the top and bottom products within limit. Since composition measurement is large time consuming process, indirect composition measurement techniques are used in industries. These techniques have been discussed in detail. Various advance control techniques have also been discussed. A computer program has been developed for distillation column dynamics. adetailed discussion on the available models for the study of the dynamics multicomponent distillation column is included A sample problem for the distillation of a three component mixture has been selected for the study of the dynamics of the distillation column.