CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background study

Companies in various fields of industry are competing to produce optimum

products quality, including oil and gas industry. Consumer’s demand for product quality
also varies depend on the consumer’s plant requirements. Explored natural gas will be
fractionated to serve a wide range of refined gas products. The existence of many
chemical companies namely Shell, PETRONAS, MMC Oil & Gas and ExxonMobil shows
this industry has been rapidly growth in Malaysia. As the chemical industry is very
progressive recently, many factories have to compete with each other in order to attract
investment from other country. Nowadays, this industry has a very strong connection to
almost every other sector in Malaysia.

Basically, chemical industry is a large industry which involves processing and

inventing desired chemicals using evaporation, absorption, separation and reaction
process. During the operation, lots of equipment such as reactor, distillation column, and
heat exchanger are used to get the product. Out of this equipment, distillation column is
the most important in industries of petroleum refining and chemical industries. Distillation
column is an important processing unit for separation of multi component mixtures in and
purification where the productions of the final products are depends on the operation
efficiency of the distillation column. In 2000, Enagandula and Riggs stated that 95% of the
separation processes for the chemical industries is using distillation column. Basically, the
physical principle of separation in distillation is the volatility difference of the components.
It separates the components of a mixture based on their boiling points and the difference

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in the compositions of the liquids and their vapors. The purity of the product depends by
the manipulation of the material and energy balance.

Depropanizer column is one of a distillation columns that used to separate mixtures

contain the propane from butane and other components. The input depropanizer column
is the bottom product of the deethanizer. Depropanizer column fractionated feed into top
product which is rich in propane and bottom product consisting of butane and naptha. The
mixture in top column is a gas that rich in propane and it is condensed in the condenser
by cooling air, and it is collected in the reflux drum. A part of the condensate is sent back
to the column by using a pump while others were left withdrawn as top product. Bottom
product from the depropanizer column is then sent to debutanizer.

Due to the development of separation process, many suppliers compete with each
other to produce product that has higher purity. However, the variations in feed flow rate,
feed composition, utility conditions, product purity specifications and environmental
changes the purity of the product. The performance of the control system in the distillation
control is important as the controller action will affect the distillate product. Controlling the
distillation column will provide a better product quality and reduce waste thus increase the
profitability. Therefore, a good control system must be applied to get high purity of
distillation column and to have a high quality of product.

1.2 Problem Statement and Hypothesis

Distillation column is a highly complex and requires a lot of tuning in control when
variables change at different rates. Controlling the composition and purity of the product
in the distillation column is one of the challenges engineers face during the operation.
Based on the data for the depropanizer column, the overhead impurity, isopropane, iC4
composition in the butane stream have several excursions, which supposedly its
specification limit for the iC4 composition at top is 2.0 mol %. The overhead product
composition in the depropanizer column is measured using a gas chromatograph (GC). A
GC can provide accurate measurement of the impurity composition of the product, but it
takes more than 10 minutes to issue the result.

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 Choosing the proper control technique for distillation columns and implementing it
properly is very crucial due to the effect of controller on product quality and production rate
of distillation column. Besides, the control of purity of the product has a large influence on
the economics of the entire process. Nowadays, as the production rate increases, the
demand for separated products is also high which causes more funds to be supplied.
Therefore, in order to minimize the operating cost, the products are controlled at purities.

In the last decade, inferential control of distillation compositions has been

investigated by many researchers. Inferential control became more popular to realize on-
line composition control, as chemical processes became more heavily instrumented and
process data were more frequently recorded (Singh, Gupta, & Gupta, 2008). The design
of an inferential control system is a good example to extract useful information from
process data and use it for improving process operation. An inferential model is often used
in process control when a measurement of the true variable being controlled is not
available in real time. Reasons for the lack of real-time measurement include cost,
reliability, and long analysis times or long dead times for sensors located far downstream.
In these cases, an inferential model provides an estimate of the process variable, which
can be used in the design of a controller to provide approximate regulation of the true
variable (Kano, Showchaiya, Hasebe, & Hashimoto, 2003).

1.3 Objectives of Research

The objectives of this study are:

1.3.1. To troubleshoot the process of the Depropanizer Column.

1.3.2. To develop a real time property inferential to replace gas chromatography
for depropanizer.
1.3.3. To validate the model by using Minitab

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1.4 Scope of Research

The scopes for this research are considered as follow:

i. Analyze and investigate the process condition that promote instabilities/constraints
to the product property of the Depropanizer column.
ii. Develop a mathematical model of property inferential using operating data
(pressure, temperature and flowrate) to build an estimate of the actual impurity in order to
improve the controllability of Depropanizer column.
iii. Minitab sofware is used to validate the mathematical obtained.

1.5 Significant of Research

The study was undertaken to design real time property inferential to replace gas
chromatography for depropanizer column by developing mathematical model using
operating data (pressure, temperature and flowrate) to build an estimate of the actual
impurity in order to improve the controllability of Depropanizer column. Therefore, the
focus of this study has been exclusively addressed to help in understanding the function
of controlling process by researching and experimentally simulating the fractionation unit
for the production to LPG. Thus, the evaluation of data can be done. The general steps
involve in substituting the actual data into the model and proceed with the error
assessment.