Comparison of MPC and PI Controller Performance in Preflash and Pipestill Column System

Preflash and Pipestill Column are two main units of petroleum processing industry which are interconnected each other. Recently the main unit used by this industry is Crude Oil Refinery Unit. As time goes by, the use of preflash and pipestill column becomes more popular because of its ability to reduce energy cost. The operation guidelines for these units always aim to safety and certain product flowrate and quality. In this work, assumptions are made where, process variables always change as the process goes. Model Predictive Control was used because it had better response compared to that of a conventional controller. The steady state and dynamic simulation was conducted using Aspen DynamicTM, and MatlabTM .A ± 15% feed flowrate disturbances and ± 25% OIL-1 mass fraction disturbances were applied to the process. The dynamic performance of the controllers was compared between MPC and conventional controller using Integral of The Absolute Value of The Error/Set Point (IAE/Set Point), as a criteria how good the performance of the controller was. The result showed that the dynamic performance of MPC controller were more superior than that of conventional controller.