Rigorous dynamics and control of continuous distillation systems—simulation and experimental results

Abstract The scope of this article is to focus the role of rigorous dynamic modeling and to present a simulation tool for multicomponent distillation columns. Comparisons between predicted dynamic profiles and available experimental results confirm that such kind of packages, based on rigorous dynamics, can nowadays be of real and practical value for engineering purposes. A short review of different applications of the DYCODIS program in a wide range of design and operating problems is also presented, namely: 1. — a general time domain approach to verify dynamic interactions among different control loops; 2. — the dynamic behavior of a superfractionator with a very large time delay; 3. — the dynamic stability analysis of multiple steady-states both for heterogeneous columns and interlinked distillation systems. In all these proposed examples, the program showed itself to be useful, reliable, robust and manageable with regard to both control synthesis or process analysis purposes.

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