Automatica, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 733-734, 1982
0010
Printed in Great Britain.
Distillation Columns*
A. Eli Nisenfeld and Richard C. Seemann
Reviewer: KURT V. WALLER
Abo Akademi, Process Control Laboratory, ,~bo, Finland
Distillation control is a field that has seen much activity during
the last 30 years, both in industry and in academic research--
deservedly so. It is, to quote Nisenfeld and Seemann, "one of
the process-control problems which has drained millions of
dollars of profit from industry".
Distillation continues to be a goldmine of problems for
process-control researchers, (Waller, 1982). Just a single
binary column and its auxiliary equipment provide a wealth of
control problems, multivariable and often nonlinear. If the
distilled mixture consists of more than two components,
non-key components can show most irregular behaviour, such
as inverse response (right half-plane zeros). Industrial systems
usually consist of several columns, connected in series and/or
parallel. This in combination with the strong trends towards
increased process integration---of which 'heat-integration' is
but one aspect--means that distillation control will most likely
be the subject of considerable activity also for a long time to
come (Waller, 1982).
A complete list of papers written about distillation dynamics
and control would probably be too extensive to be of much
use. As one would expect inventions in distillation control
proposed long ago are reinvented from time to time.
With this background it is not surprising that it is unlikely
one will meet a researcher in process control who has not been
active in distillation, but it is surprising, however, that not
more books have been written about distillation control.
Anisimov's monograph (Anisimov, 1959) is from the late
1950s; the extensive text by Rademaker, Rijnsdorp and
Maarleveld (1975) is based on the literature up to the late
1960s. While Rademaker and co-workers' book contains a
great deal of material about research in distillation dynamics,
Shinskey's (Shinskey, 1977) is more practical. Shinskey's style
of presentation is, however, such that it may be difficult for a
reader to see the potential of all his ideas and proposals, if he is
not already quite familiar with the subject.
Thus, it would seem that a new introductory text on
distillation control is necessary, a text "aimed at the control
engineer dealing with distillation columns for the first time, or
the engineer familiar with distillation who has suddenly been
challenged to control the process": this is the stated aim of
Nisenfeid and Seemann.
The book in a practical and easy-to-read way introduces the
basics of distillation, what the basic distillation control prob-
lems are, and how they can be solved in industrial practice.
The problems treated are, for example feed-rate and feed-
temperature control, reboiler control, condensers and pres-
sure control, level control in reflux drum and reboiler, as well
as reflux and internal vapor-flow control. Various schemes to
control one of the product compositions are also discussed
quite extensively.
The treatment is highly descriptive, the equations and
numerical examples are few, and exercises are not included.
This approach leads to an easily read book but relying on
heuristics and reasoning can be misleading and dangerous:
*Distillation Columns, by A. Eli Nisenfeld and Richard C.
Seemann. Published by The Instrument Society of America,
North Carolina (1981). 238 pp., U.S. $25.00.
733
0005-1098/82/060733--02503.
Pergamon Press Ltd.
© 1982 International Federation of Automatic Control
Book Review
'commonsense' works well in simple systems, but often gets
lost in more complicated ones, such as those containing
feedback.
Although the quantitative treatment is sparse, there are a
number of small errors which easily could have been eli-
minated in the final stages of the book's production. They may
be misleading to a newcomer to the field: the intended reader.
My main objection, however, concerns the state-of-mind of
the reader after reading the book. I believe a book of this kind
should finish with some loose ends, some hints at what current
research is concerned with and what it is likely to be concerned
with tomorrow, so as to excite the curiosity and imagination of
the reader and inspire him to dig deeper into the subject. The
book falls short in this respect. The chapter called "advanced
control systems" simply treats feedforward control, override
control, and decoupling (which in the distillation control
literature has got the meaning of using a precompensator to
make the transfer function matrix diagonal or triangular). The
treatment of decoupling can be used to illustrate the objection.
The section treats only so-called two-way decoupling, and
only one out of several possible, equally simple schemes. This
scheme has turned out to be impossible to realize in several
distillation cases in practice. So-called one-way decoupling is
not mentioned, neither is the important problem of sensitivity
to modeling errors. Decoupling in distillation has been the
subject of considerable activity during the last years. Nothing
of this is reflected in the book. Shinskey's treatment (Shin-
skey, 1977) is much more satisfactory in these respects
although it is five years old.
When, for example, multivariable self-tuning control al-
ready has been experimentally applied to distillation, it is
indeed not an understatement to label feedforward and simple
decoupling "advanced control".
The book needs complementary material to provide the
reader with a picture of which distillation control problems are
of main interest today. In this respect a well-chosen reference
list together with comments would have been a significant
improvement.
There is also a definite need for a book on more advanced
control approaches to distillation, a book summing up the last
5-10 years' achievements in this very active and economically
important area of process control.
To conclude, Nisenfeld and Seemann's text is a (fairly)
clearly written introduction to distillation and distillation
control. It is largely descriptive and contains a minimum of
equations. What is labeled "advanced control" is not very
advanced. It seems that the book could have been written l0
years ago. The word "introduction" would have been ap-
propriate in the title of the book.
The book is easy to read and can be recommended as a first
text for the newcomer to the field. In my opinion it should not,
however, be used as the only text.
REFERENCES
Anisimov, I. V. (1959). Automatic Control of Rectification
Processes. (Translated from Russian.) Chapman & Hall,
London.
Rademaker, O., J. E. Rijnsdorp and A. Maarleveld (1975).
Dynamics and Control of Continuous Distillation Units.
Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Shinskey, F. G. (1977). Distillation Control. McGraw-Hill,
New York.
734 Book Review

Waller, K. V. (1982). University research on dual composition
control of distillation: a review. In Seborg, D. E. and T. F.
Edgar (Eds). Chemical Process Control, 2nd edn. Engineer-
ing Foundation, distributed by AIChE, New York.
About the reviewer
Kurt V. Waller was born in Mariehamn, Finland, in 1940.
After studying in Finland and West Germany he received his
degrees: M.Sc., Tech. Lic. and Tech. Dr from/~bo Akademi,
Finland, in 1966,1970, and 1972, respectively. A member of the
faculty of Chemical Engineering at Abo Akademi since 1970,
Dr. Waller was appointed full professor in 1975. During the
academic year 1978-1979 Dr. Waller was a Senior Fulbright
Fellow with the University of California at Berkeley. Profes-
sor Waller has written about 50 scientific papers, mainly on
process dynamics, optimization, and control.