Control policies for an industrial acetylene hydrogenation reactor

Abstract

AbstractThis paper addresses the problem of finding optimal operational policies for an acetylene reactor for day to day operation. A lumped parameter model based on four main reactions is developed and used to examine the effects of the reactor manipulated variables on key reaction parameters. An optimal and a sub‐optimal operational policy which minimize the ethylene loss over time are formulated and the solution techniques are presented. The results indicate that the reactor model is in good agreement with industrial plant data. The performance of the optimal control policy is very similar to the performance of the sub‐optimal control policy. However, the sub‐optimal formulation, while retaining the dominant features of the optimal response, reduces the computational requirements. Finally, some issues concerning the real‐time implementation of an advanced acetylene reactor control scheme are presented. These include the estimation of the optimum regeneration cycle, a recursive model update algorithm, the process optimizer and their overall coordination. A preliminary analysis of the benefits associated with the advanced control scheme suggests a considerable reduction in the yearly ethylene loss.