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Abstract

This work has been carried out to demonstrate the application of Tyreus-Luyben PI and PID methods in the decoupling temperature control of a reactive distillation process using the production of ethyl acetate and water (by-product) from the esterification reaction between acetic acid and ethanol as the case study. For comparison purposes, Ziegler-Nichols PI control method was also simulated. The process model, from which the decoupling matrix was estimated, was developed with the aid of System Identification Toolbox of MATLAB using the experimental data generated from the reactive packed distillation column set up. The developed decoupling control was simulated for set-point tracking using MATLAB/Simulink. The top segment temperature, the reaction segment temperature and the bottom segment temperature were selected as the controlled variables while the reflux ratio, the feed ratio and the reboiler duty were respectively chosen as the manipulated variables. The good responses with low oscillations obtained from the simulations of the decoupling control of the process using Tyreus-Luyben PI and PID control methods have shown that the control of the reactive distillation process has been achieved successfully with each of these methods and that the developed control system using these methods can thus be applied to the real process. In addition, due to its lowest values of IAE and ISE, Tyreus-Luyben PID method has been found to be the best one among the methods that were studied.