Distillation columns with a high-purity product (down to 7 ppm) have been studied. A steady state model is developed using a commercial process simulator. The model is validated against industrial data. Based on the model, three major optimal operational changes are identified. These are, lowering the location of the feed & side draw streams, increasing the pressure at the top of the distillati...

Distillation columns are complex processes for modeling and controlling. These columns are significant parts of most chemical industries for separation of components. Control of this process is essential for achieving certain purity for products with a minimum cost. However, nonlinearities, multivariable interaction, non-stationary behavior and severity of disturbances inside the column made th...

Crude oil distillation (atmospheric distillation column with furnace) consumes about 50% of the energy required in oil refinery plant. To achieve further reduction of the energy required in oil refinery plants, it is required to investigate the crude oil distillation and to retrofit it for energy saving process. Recently, authors developed an innovative process design technology, self-heat recu...

This paper deals with robust low-order controller design for a medium-scale pilot reactive distillation column. In the first step, a linear model of the column which is identified from experiments is used to compute the attainable control performance. In this step, actuator limitations and model uncertainty resulting from a priori knowledge as well as confidence intervals provided by the identi...

  Abstract: In this paper, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used for modeling the nonlinear structure of a debutanizer column in a refinery gas process plant. The actual input-output data of the system were measured in order to be used for system identification based on root mean square error (RMSE) minimization approach. It was shown that the designed recurrent neural network is able to pr...

Dimethyl amino ethyl azide (DMAZ) is a good replacement for hydrazine group in space programs. This chemical was purified from water (1) + DMAZ (2) mixture in sub-atmospheric distillation column due to thermal sensitivity of DMAZ. For designing of the column, it is necessary to have vapor-liquid equilibrium data. In this article, T-x,y and y-x diagrams were obtain...

The fully thermally coupled distillation column offers an alternative to conventional distillation towers, with the possibility of savings in both energy and capital costs. This innovative and promising alternative provides the opportunity to separate a multicomponent mixture into fractions with high purities merely in one column. A lack of knowledge still exists when dealing with the startup o...

essential oil of the orange peel which was extracted by hydrodistillation method showed 50 different mono- and sesquiterpenes on gc-ms analysis, in which limonene had the highest percentage (92.4%). due to various important uses of the compound, a method was developed for isolation and purification of limonene. in this method, for extra purification, a fractional distillation on vigreux column ...

Fatty acid esterification is increasingly realized as a reactive distillation (RD) process because of its formation being affected by the chemical equilibrium. The reactive distillation column performance for the production of isopropyl palmitate by esterification of the palmitic acid with isopropanol has been studied in the present research. The reaction was catalyzed in the presence of zinc a...

Diphenyl carbonate (DPC) is a precursor in the production of polycarbonate, an important engineering thermoplastic with excellent mechanical and optical properties as well as electrical and heat resistance properties. Traditionally, DPC is synthesized by the transesterification reaction of dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and phenol. In the study, phenyl acetate is used instead of phenol to react with ...