Nonlinear control of an industrial reactive distillation column

Abstract

Control of reactive distillation columns is a challenging task due to the complex dynamics arising from the coupling of reaction and separation. In this paper asymptotically exact input/output-linearization is applied to an industrial reactive distillation column. This control scheme requires knowledge of the complete state of the process and therefore an observer is designed. To compensate for steady state observer offsets an outer control loop with simple PI-controllers is implemented. In comparison to a well tuned linear controller the nonlinear controller shows a superior performance with respect to setpoint-changes and disturbances, even in the presence of unknown input delays.