Decoupling PID Control of a Reactive Packed Distillation Column

Abstract

This work has been carried out to demonstrate the application of decouplers in the temperature control of a reactive packed distillation column using PID controllers and the production of ethyl acetate as the case study. Ziegler-Nichols and Cohen-Coon techniques were used to calculate the tuning parameters of the controllers for simulation with the aid of MATLAB/Simulink. In the set-point tracking study, top segment, reaction segment and bottom segment temperatures were the controlled variables while reflux ratio, feed ratio and reboiler duty were chosen as the manipulated variables. For the disturbance rejection study, the reboiler duty was chosen as the disturbance variable. After the simulation, the results obtained from the simulations showed that decoupling PID control has been successfully applied to the reactive packed distillation column. In addition, the lower values of IAEs and ISEs of Cohen-Coon tuning technique revealed that it was better than Ziegler-Nichols tuning technique for this process.