RIGOROUS INDUSTRIAL DYNAMIC SIMULATION OF A CRUDE DISTILLATION UNIT CONSIDERED VALVE TRAY RATING PARAMETERS

A rigorous dynamic simulation is performed to find optimal operating c onditions of a crude distillation unit with 56 trays and 65,000 barrel per day capacity. The model includes not only mass and energy balance equations but also nonlinear equations capturing the fluid behavior i n the column such as downcomer load;jet flooding, hole velocity limit and downcomer backup. Discrete behavior of pump and heater on/off, val ve open/close are also included. Hundreds of thousand differential alg ebraic equations(DAEs) are set up and solved by gPROMS simultaneously. As a result, the dynamic behavior of the unit during the starting and shutdown procedure is fully understood. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevie r Science Ltd. All rights reserved.