Optimal design and control of a high-purity industrial distillation system

In this paper, a complex industrial distillation system, designed in a trad itional manner without considering the interactions of design and control, is introduced and shown to be severely ill-conditioned, Through rigorous mo delling and sensitivity analysis, a new control scheme is first proposed fo r overcoming the history of operational difficulties experienced by the sys tem. A simultaneous dynamic optimisation-based approach is then implemented to highlight the economic and operability benefits that could have been ob tained if design and control interactions had been systematically considere d in the first place. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.