NONLINEAR MODEL-BASED CONTROL OF A BINARY DISTILLATION COLUMN

This paper concerns the control of both product purities of a binary d istillation column. Reflux and boilup flow rates are chosen as manipul ated variables, and the corresponding control laws are derived within the Globally Linearizing Control framework. Reduced order models of th e column are developed that allow the controller synthesis to be carri ed out easily. Simulation results indicate that the proposed control s trategy outperforms a conventional PI control strategy by a significan t amount.