Control and profile setting of reactive distillation column for benzene chloride consecutive reaction system

The purpose of this paper is to design and analyze the control structures of a consecutive reactive distillation process. On the basis of the optimal economic design, a systematic framework for the design of the decentralized control structure, controller parameter tuning, and setting profiles under uncertainty disturbances is proposed for benzene chloride production in a reactive distillation column. Its effectiveness and robustness are analyzed for disturbance resistance in terms of changes of the production rate and the feed composition. Simulations indicate that better control performance can be obtained by proper control loop pairing, tray location identification, and controller tuning. Furthermore, process performances are compared for the three different profile setting cases in the forms of one-step, multistep, and quadratic function changes of the product rate adjustment. The result shows that the process transient performance, such as overshoot, smoothness, and stability, can be greatly affected by the set-point transition form, indicating that it is necessary to study the relevant production rate set-point adjustment strategy.