Operation and decoupling control of a heterogeneous azeotropic distillation column

In this work, proper operation and improved control of a heterogeneous azeo tropic distillation of isopropyl alcohol (IPA) + water (H2O) with cyclohexa ne (CyH) as an entrainer were investigated. A simple operating procedure un der inverse double loop control strategy is proposed to automatically adjus t the manipulated variables to be at optimum operating point. A simple one- way decoupling control scheme is also proposed to account for the high inte ractions between two temperature control loops. Both feed rate and composit ion load disturbances will be introduced to test the proposed decoupling co ntrol scheme. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.