Comparative Control Study of a High-Purity Ternary Batch Distillation

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative closed-loop performance study on a multicomponent batch distillation column that produces high-purity distillate product. Initially, the distillation model representing a ternary system of cyclohexane-toluene-chlorobenzene has been simulated to observe the open-loop dynamics at the start-up as well as production phase. The next three control schemes, namely classical proportional integral (PI) controller, nonlinear proportional integral (NLPI) control strategy and gain-scheduled proportional integral (GSPI) law, have been designed and applied on the simulated distillation column. Numerical experiments based on servo and regulatory tests show that the GSPI algorithm provides relatively better results than the other two PIs.