Optimal Start-Up and Product Transition Policies of a Reactive Distillation Column

Abstract

In the processing industry, there is the need to approach the operation of industrial equipment so they increase their energy efficiency, leading to more-economical and environmentally oriented processes. A feasible way to achieve these purposes lies in the optimal dynamic operation of industrial operations. In this work, we address the dynamic optimal operation of a highly energy-intensive industrial operation (distillation) under two common operating scenarios: start-up and steady-state transition operations. The start-up operations and steady-state transitions of a reactive distillation column were addressed in this paper by approaching the problem as a dynamic optimization problem. A detailed tray-by-tray model that considers internal tray hydraulics, but ignores vapor dynamics, was derived and used for calculations. Several manipulated variables were considered, besides the reboiler heat duty. The large scale nonlinear programming (NLP) problems generated from the application of the simultaneous dyn...