DECISION SUPPORTING SYSTEM FOR THE DESIGN OF CONTROL-SYSTEMS FOR DISTILLATION-COLUMNS

Distillation is regarded as the most important thermal separation proc ess in chemical industry. The adjustment of desired product qualities lays special emphasis on the control system, especially in view of min imum specific energy consumption. The standard separation process does not exist. For this reason there is no general solution for the autom ation of distillation columns at the moment. The great variety of dist illation columns and operating conditions requires the design of new, and the review of existing control systems. The presented decision sup porting system shall help process and control engineers in screening a lternative control systems at an early stage of the design process. Th e system is part of a cooperation project of the companies Henkel KGaA , Dusseldorf, Schmidding Werke GmbH & Co, Koln, and the University of Siegen.