© Compute an heal Engen Supple (139) SES-S838 1 199 Enver Some Ld Al he ered Nonlinear PI Control of an Ethylene Glycol Reactive Distillation Column Rosendo Monroy-Loperena', Eduardo Pérez-Cisneros” , José Alvarez-Ramirez* 1. Departamento de Mateméticas ~ Area de Andi is Aplicado 2. Departamento de Ingenieria de Procesos e Hidrailica Area de Recursos Energéticos 3. Departamento de Ingenieria de Procesos e Hidraslica ~ Area de Ingenieria Quimica ‘Universidad AutGnoma Metropolitana-I7tapalapa ‘Apartado Postal 55-534, México D-F. 09000 México E-mail: espe@ xanum.uam.mx Fax: +52. Abstract 7244900 ‘The control problem of an ethylene glycol reactive distillation column is studied in this work. The control objective is to regulate the ethylene glycol composition in the product by manipulating the reboiler boil-up ratio. By using an estimator of the input-output modeling error, a first-order output-feedback compensator is designed which is shown. to be equivalent to a PI controller with antireset windup structure. The ability of the controller to regulate the product composition in the face of unknown nonlinearities and sampled/delayed measurements is shown via a ‘aumerical simulation on a rigorous dynamical model. Keywords: Reactive disilation; Robust PI control; Modeling error compensation, Introduction Distillation columns and chemical reactors are among the most important processes in the chemical industry. Reactive distillation is an innovating process. which realizes both distillation and chemical reaction into a solely unit. The dynamics and the operation of reactive distillation columns (RDC) have attracted the attention of researchers in the recent decade. The underiying ‘motivation relies on the fact that industrial RDC processes may be operated at unstable operating Conditions, which often corresponds to optimal process performance. In virtually all present-day industrial applications, the basic reactor temperature regulation problem is efficiently solved using proportional plus integral (PI) controller. On the other hand, important factors such as ‘unmodeleded nonlinearities (e.g. chemical kinetics and liguid-vapor equilibrium relationships) and control input saturations due to_cooling/heating. system imitations, ust be considered inthe control design. To the best of our knowledge, Kumar and Daoutidis (1997) addressed one of the first systematic approaches to the problem of controlling RDC’s, As a preliminary step, & bifurcation analysis was performed which revealed a region of output multiplicity and a transition from minimum-phase behavior at moderate product purity to a nonminimum-phase behavior at high product, purity. For the case of an ethylene glycol RDC, a nonlinear controller was designed yielding good performance in setpoint tracking. However, robustness issues in the face of modeling ervors were not addressed, ‘The main objective ofthe present work isto study some ‘control aspects of an ethylene glycol RDC. The control task is to regulate the product purity using the boil-up ratio, which is directly related to the teboiler heat input Although our control design approach applies for a rather general class of RDC’, for the sake of presetaton the column studied by Circ and Gu (1994) Js taken as our base case study. To achieve the contol objectives, a firstorder compensator endowed with a ‘modeling errr estimator is proposed, which is shown to be equivalent to a PI controller with antireset windup structure. A numerical simulation on a rigorous CHO, (DEG), ‘The differential equations governing the dynamics of the column are readily obtained from material and ‘energy balances, reaction rate equations, and summation ‘equations. The model used in this work is similar from to the one of Citic and Gu, 1994, who used a mixed integer nonlinear programming approach to obtain a ‘cost-optimal column design (See Figure 1). Since the ‘ethylene oxide is the common reactant in both reactions (see the reaction scheme RS), the idea is to optimize its feeding along the column. The cost-optimal column ‘contains 10 trays. Separation and reaction occur om trays 5 through 10, and separation without reaction oceurs on trays 1 through 4. Reaction volumes are distributed ‘unevenly between trays 5-10. Water in the amount of 26.3 kmolhn is fed onto the top tray, and a total feed of 27.56 kmolM of ethylene oxide is distributed among, trays 6-10. The distribution of ethylene oxide and the liquid holdup volumes among the reactive trays was, taken as in Table 2 in Ciric and Miao (1994). Insn addition, physical properties for chemical reactions were taken as in Table I in Ciric and Miao (1994), same | I Ly eat tne ov 5 sauabaichip ot ree Be Ly | neni on ful tne Figure 1 Optimal distributed feed reactive distillation column for ethylene glycol synthesis, (Citic and Miao, 199: In RDC with total refi, the reboiler heat duty, Qy is taken as the manipulated. variable to regulate the product purity (Kumar and Daoutiis, 1997). In our ase, the reboilerboil-up ratio (RBR) B is the vaporized portion of liquid stream leaving the reboiler tray. Thus B is proportional to Q, and can be taken as the ‘manipulated variable fo conto purposes. Control Design Ik is expected that the RDC be subjected to exogenous Perturbations. in the feed conditions e.g. flowrate, ‘concentration and temperature, Hence, control actions must be made to regulate the operation of the process. In this section we will use a modeling error ‘compensation approach to demonstrate that a PI configuration with antireset windup (ARW) is able to ‘control the EG-RDC despite of exogenous perturbations and setpoint changes. Control Design: Knowledge ‘The control objective is to regulate the EG composition in the product, x,,, at a prescribed set point, yy by ‘manipulating the boil-up ratio, B. For simplicity in notation, take y =x, as the EG composition in the product flowrate. The dynamics of the regulated output (0 ate governed by S=-8()+ F0)+ 9H, + 8)B 0 State Feedback and Complete where {bos VK at Computer and Chemical Engineering Suplemen: (1999) S835-$838 sdehy B= Hp, en X $.(Xgy-vaky)" € R’ the vector of chemical species ‘concentration in the first tay, and H, is given by the plate hydraulic dynamics. Note that under regular ‘operating conditions e(y)>0, for all t2 0. Hence, the EG ‘concentration is controllable via manipulations of the Doil-up rai. ‘Assume measurements of all the chemical species Concentrations and perfect knowledge of the (vapor and liquid) flowrates, vapor-liguid equilibrium relationship and chemical reaction rates. Of course, these are not reasonable assumptions for practical applications; hhowever, we use them as an intermediate step towards the final controller design in the next section, which will bbe a regulation error-driven controller. ‘Suppose that a closed-loop performance is specified via the desired closed-loop dynamics y="(y.¢¥), where £50 is the closed-loop time constant. This closed-loop behavior can be attained with the following (ideal) 1O- Tinearizing feedback function’ BY= 6, 0.%,L,.¥)) @ where Bray = 1+ L FOua) = oth +76 Va) and e, yy is the regulation error. A drawback of this feedback function i that arbitrarily large contol actions ‘may be fequired t0 attain the control objective. In fact, te contol inptis subjected to physical saturations. We further assume thatthe boi-up Fai i subjected to take ‘values into the interval (By Bg With O0 is @ known estimate of g(y). The unknown functions f(y) yH, and Ag(y)=g(9)-E(9) must be estimated in some fashion to implement the feedback function (4). In this work, we propose an adaptive control approach with on-line unknown signals estimation ‘The dynamics of the EG composition (1) can be rewritten in terms of a nominal model as follows: G++ FO)8 © N= FLO) + VEOH OF AGO BO is the JO modeling error. Then, the coresponding saturated version of the ideal feedback function 3) is zien by Bi =Sa1@,0.0) oO where 4.o.n=t+bn-'e, VEO) and, if (0) is an estimate ofthe modeling error signal ‘(the practical feedback control function becomes B, = Sat(e,(9.1) m From the UO representation (5), itis posible to show thatthe dynamics ofthe modeling error signal (0) can be reconstructed from measurements of the regulated ‘output, y(t), and the contol input, B(). Tn fact, M0) =30)+FO-FOO)BO evidences a kind of strong observability (Diop and Fliess, 1991) of the modeling error signal 1(0.. This property can be exploited to propose an observer-based ‘estimator. Let 0, =5+80)- 8B be the equivalent measured signal. Note that (0,4) =n(1),120. To estimate the signal n(t) we build the reduced-order observer W220, -1=1;'+0-PRO)-A) ® where 1>0 is the estimation time constant. A realization of the estimator (8) is given by introducing the variable so wetate, ‘we have that I~ BE) -#/'(v=e,) o where the modeling error estimate is given as =t,\w-e,) “The resulting control law is composed by the feedback function (7) and the ftstorder estimator (9), and depends only on the known function g(y) and the measured signals ,) and Bi). ‘The Structure of the Proposed Control Law To clarify the structure of the proposed control law (My(9), take B=oom=i+ba+'e a0) and p,=San(B.) as the computed and effective control respectively. From (9), we get inputs, w= (8, -DEQO)-8,' (we) =B. -DE()=1;'w=e,)- FOB, -B.) ete, BOMB, ~ 8) Using the fact that Tat \wre,) the computed control input i given by b.=t+b meee VEO) feo +429¢, =e) 20) aificere tee feoMde + [z018.0)-A.okte a0 where denotes a dummy argument for integration Surprisingly, the computed control law is a Pl controller ‘with antirest windup structure (Kothare et al, 1994). In fact, the nominal control input value B=1, and the control gain K, and the integral time >0 are given by ao) [Note that K, is time-varying because of a(y). Moreover, the ARW structure is induced by the latter integral ‘which contains the feedback term e018, - 8.) an If the contol input is not saturated e.g. B=.» this feedback term has no effects in the computed control law, which becomes equivalent tothe well known PL controller. On the other hand, when the control input is saturated eg. B*P., the feedback signal (11) drives the error B=, 0 2et0 by recomputing the integral such thatthe controller ouput, is exactly atthe saturationsas limit. This prevents the controller from winding up (Kothare er al, 1994). We conclude that the modeling error estimation scheme (9) endows the proposed controller with a natural ARW structure. By virtue of this structure, the first-order filter (9) is able to provide an asymptotic estimate of the modeling errr signal 7(t) in spite of control input saturations. AA standard (linear) PI controller can be obtained if the constant estimate ly, is taken, so thatthe control gain KK, and the antireset” windup gain are also constants. Implementation of such PI controller can be made with standard technology (e.g. PLCs). Numerical Simulations To illustrate the performance of the controller (7), (9) Wwe carried out several numerical simulations on a rigorous. model of the reactive distillation column. ‘Space limitations permit only show one realistic situation where the EG concentration is available from sampled and delayed measurements and the heat exchanging process inthe reboiler is subjected toa frst coder’ unmodeled dynamics (x, + 1)°. To this end, suppose that %,=0.05h and the sampling period equal to 02h. The dominant unmodeled dynamics are those induced by the measurements, hence we choose ¢, ofthe order of 0.15 to 0.2h. Figure 2 presents the dynamical behavior of the control input and the regulated output when a set point change from 0.9 to 0.93 is made at t=I0h, and a +10% disturbance is made in the flowrate fed of the fifth tray (see Figure 1) at t=20h. The feedback controller (7), (9) is able to regulate the EG ‘composition and reject exogenous perturbations. These regulation and disturbance rejection capabilites. are induced by the modeling error estimation introduced by the first-order filter (9). Reboler bollup, 6 Mol racton of £G in ie product Tim (hl Figure 2 Dynamical behavior of the control input and the regulated output Computes and Chemical Engincering Suplement (1999) S835-S838 Conclusions In this work, we addressed the control problem of an ‘ethylene glycol reactive distillation column in the face of strong uncertainties inthe dynamics of the regulated ‘output. The new idea we proposed for robust Stabilization is based on modeling error compensation techniques and consists of interpreting. the modeling error signal as a new state. whose dynamics can be reconstructed from available measurements. In this way, Wwe used an. observer-based. estimator which was subsequently used in a saturated version of an UO linearizing feedback function. The resulting controller is shown to be equivalent to a standard PI controller with antireset windup structure. An advantage of the proposed control is its simple structure. Nomenclature Regulation error H Liquid holdup K, __Equlibrium factor of component iin stage j L) Liquid flow leaving stage j Q Reboilerheat dy Y, Vapor flow leaving stage iy Bien glicol composition in the product y'' _Builen glicol composition in the product. y(0) Regulated output Greek letters B — Reboiler boil-up ratio & Extent of reaction j V, Stoichiometric coefficient of component iin reaction j + Time constant Q Region References Ciric, AR. Gu., G., 1994, Synthesis of nonequilibrium reactive distilation processes via mixed integer ‘nonlinear programming, AICHE J. , 40, 1479. Circ, A.R; Miao, P., 1994, Steady state multiplicities in an ethylene glycol reactive distillation column, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.,33, 2738. Diop, S; Fliess, M., 1991, On nonlinear observability, In: Proc. Ist. European Control Conference, 152- 157. Kothare, M.V.; Campo, P.J.; Morari, Mai Netts, C1. 1994, A unified study of anti-windup designs, Automatica, 30, 1869-1883. Kumar, A. and P. Dauotidis, 1997 Nonlinear control of ‘high-purity ethylene glycol reactive distillation ‘column, Proc. IFAC-ADCHEM, Banff, Canada July, 371.