Study of Control Properties of Intensified Thermally Coupled Distillation Sequences

In this work, we analyze the control properties of thermally coupled reactive distillation sequences and thermally coupled extractive distillation sequences in comparison with conventional reactive and extractive distillation configurations. All sequences have been designed using a multi objective genetic algorithm with restrictions. We study the theoretical control properties of those schemes using the singular value decomposition technique in all frequency domain and we also present an analysis on the closed loop behavior with dynamic rigorous simulations. The effects of total stages, reactive stages, and extractant/feed ratio on the energy consumption and control properties are obtained for the intensified distillation options. The results show that there are cases in which integrated reactive and extractive sequences do not only provide significant energy savings with respect to the conventional reactive and extractive arrangements, but also may offer dynamic advantages in nonoptimal design conditions.