Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305

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Computers and Chemical Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compchemeng

Analysis and control of a partially heat integrated refinery debutanizer

Amiya K. Jana ∗ , Santosh V. Mali
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this contribution, the internal heat integration concept has been applied on a commercial refinery
Received 19 April 2009 debutanizer column for the separation of an eight-component hydrocarbon mixture. Here, the thermo-
Received in revised form 6 March 2010 dynamic feasibility of this process has been identified. Then, an economically interesting partially heat
Accepted 8 March 2010
integrated debutanizer column (HIDBC) configuration is explored. A sensitivity test has been conducted
Available online 16 March 2010
to select the compression ratio required to meet the product specification. This study deals with the
parametric analysis to investigate the effect of important parameters on product purity and energy con-
Keywords:
sumption. An economic comparison between the conventional debutanizer and the proposed thermally
Partial HIDBC
Energy saving
coupled debutanizer scheme is also performed. This paper proposes a control algorithm that consid-
Sensitivity ers the control of most sensitive tray temperatures. The singular-value decomposition (SVD) method is
Economics used for selecting the sensitive trays. Finally, the closed-loop control performance of the HIDBC has been
Control examined. Due to the internal energy integration, better performance is achieved with up to 44% energy
saving and more than 14% saving in total annual cost.
© 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Distillation, which is the workhorse of chemical process indus-
tries, is quite energy intensive and accounts for a large part of
industrial energy consumption. It is reported (see Humphrey &
Keller, 1997) that nearly 4% of the total energy requirement in the
USA in 1988 is directed to distillation processes. It is a fact that
energy consumption in distillation and CO2 gases produced in the
atmosphere are strongly related. The higher the energy demands
are, the larger the CO2 emissions to the atmosphere are. This is
because the energy is mostly generated through the combustion of
fossil fuel.
The basic idea of heat integration approach is that the hot pro-
cess streams are heat exchanged with cold process streams. In this
manner, resources are used more economically. Mah and cowork-
ers (see Shimizu & Mah, 1983; Shimizu, Holt, Morari, & Mah, 1985)
introduced the heat integrated distillation column (HIDiC) config-
uration that considers the internal heat integration between the
rectifying and stripping columns. This general HIDiC scheme has
both the trim-reboiler and trim-condenser. In the ideal HIDiC (i-
HIDiC) mechanism (see Huang, Nakaiwa, Akiya, Aso, & Takamatsu,
1996; Takamatsu, Nakaiwa, Nananishi, & Aso, 1997), no condenser
or reboiler has been employed. The internal vapor and liquid over-
flows are solely generated by internal heat integration between
the two sections. When hot overhead vapor outlet of rectifying col-
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 03222 283918; fax: +91 03222 282250.
E-mail address: akjana@che.iitkgp.ernet.in (A.K. Jana).
umn of the i-HIDiC is reused as a potential hot utility for the feed
preheating, the ideal configuration is renamed as the intensified i-
HIDiC (see Fukushima, Kano, & Hasebe, 2006; Nakaiwa et al., 2003).
Recently, it is shown (see Fukushima et al., 2006) that the intensi-
fied i-HIDiC is more energy efficient compared to other distillation
columns (e.g., general HIDiC and i-HIDiC).
It is fairly true that the degree of heat integration and control-
lability are likely to have an inverse relation. It is reported (see
Nakaiwa et al., 2003) that for the case of highly energy efficient
HIDiC, i.e. intensified i-HIDiC, there is a pole lie at the origin of the
complex plane, and hence the complexities in process operation
and control arise. It is not expected that one would build a highly
energy efficient process that is very poorly controllable or uncon-
trollable. Keeping this point in mind, the present work attempts to
device a partially heat integrated distillation structure.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of heat inte-
gration in a refinery debutanizer column. The debutanizer column
that is frequently encountered in oil refineries is chosen mainly
because of its dynamic complexities (Huang & Riggs, 2002), and the
limited application of heat integration to multicomponent systems
(Iwakabe et al., 2006). The present work identifies the feasibility
region for internal thermal coupling between the rectifying and
stripping sections. The compression ratio has been tuned by car-
rying out a sensitivity test. The influence of different parameters
on the process behavior is examined. It is shown that the devel-
oped configuration is an economically attractive version of heat
integration techniques.
Because of the relatively small investment, low maintenance
cost and high reliability, the temperature control of a distillation

0098-1354/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.compchemeng.2010.03.002
 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305 1297

Nomenclature

BP brake power, kW
cin installation cost coefficient
cm construction material cost coefficient
cp pressure range cost coefficient
cs tray spacing type cost coefficient
ct tray design type cost coefficient
KC controller gain
Lbot liquid flow rate leaving bottom tray, kmol/h
M&S Marshall and Swift inflation index
PH gauge pressure of high-pressure (HP) steam, atm
PR rectifying column pressure, kPa
PS stripping column pressure, kPa
QR reboiler duty, W
R reflux rate, kg/h
T tray temperature, ◦ C
UR SVD matrix with respect to R
UQR SVD matrix with respect to QR
Vtop vapor flow rate leaving top tray, kmol/h Fig. 1. A simplified flow scheme of the refinery debutanizer column.
yr operating hours per year
i controller integral time, min Table 1
Details of the conventional debutanizer column.

Term Value/condition Unit

column gets preference over the composition control. The singular-
Feed (flashed out) condition Two phase –
value decomposition (SVD) method (see Kaymak & Luyben, 2006) Feed flow rate 399.42 kmol/h
is an efficient technique used to identify the sensitive trays. In the Reflux ratio 1.4
◦
present study, a control algorithm is proposed for a multicompo- Overhead vapor (Vtop ) temperature 33.45 C
◦
nent heat integrated distillation that considers the regulation of Bottom liquid (Lbot ) temperature 79.06 C

most sensitive tray temperatures. The selection of control pair- Composition of flash drum feed
ings is one of the main issues that to be covered in the proposed C2 0.00120174 –
C3 0.0067598 –
closed-loop study. This control strategy is successfully applied on
iC4 0.24079915 –
reactive and nonreactive conventional distillation columns. In this nC4 0.3151570 –
paper, however, the closed-loop performance has been evaluated iC5 0.12167645 –
for both the temperature and composition control loops. Many pre- nC5 0.10244855 –
vious studies (see for example Fukushima et al., 2006; Zhu & Liu, nC6 0.1315908 –
nC8 0.0803665
2005) have dealt with the control of binary distillation columns
having heat integration. Up to now, very limited number of papers
(see for example Huang, Shan, Zhu, & Qian, 2007; Huang, Wang,
valve and internal heat exchangers. The top vapors of the stripping
Iwakabe, Shan, & Zhu, 2007) has reported the closed-loop control
column are compressed and then introduced at the bottom of the
of energy integrated distillation processes employed to fractionate
rectifying column. So, there exists a pressure difference between
the multicomponent mixtures.
the two columns. The bottom stream of the rectifying section is fed
into the top of the stripping section, as is the feed to the stripping
2. The process

The debutanizer column is an important part of several pro-

cess units of the oil refinery. It shows high dimensional coupling
with nonlinearity and is subject to a complex interactive set of
operational constraints (Huang & Riggs, 2002). Because of the great
industrial importance of the debutanizer column, this complex pro-
cess is chosen for heat integration.
A typical conventional debutanizer column (CDBC) is shown in
Fig. 1. This conventional distillation unit consists of 20 theoretical
stages, including a total condenser and a rebolier. The representa-
tive column is used to recover butane from an unstabilized naphtha
feed having components C2 to nC8 . The feed is fed at stage 10 (using
Aspen notation of numbering stages from the condenser down the
column). The example debutanizer is detailed elsewhere (see Jana,
2008) and the values of operating parameters and steady state
information are reported in Table 1.
The heat integration concept has been applied to this commer-
cial refinery debutanizer column. The heat integrated debutanizer
column (HIDBC) is shown in Fig. 2 and the relevant information
are recorded in Table 2. It consists of two separate columns (rec-
tifying and stripping), a flash chamber, a compressor, a throttling Fig. 2. Schematic representation of the heat integrated debutanizer scheme.
1298 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305

Table 2
Details of the heat integrated debutanizer column.

Component Mole fraction

Distillate Bottom

C2 0.00343033 4.41682e−011
C3 0.019164 7.09879e−005
iC4 0.479978 0.111824
nC4 0.478840 0.226917
iC5 0.0164636 0.178411
nC5 0.00217027 0.156522
nC6 1.40852e−007 0.202551
nC8 2.03823e−016 0.123704

Type of condenser Total condenser

Overhead vapor (Vtop ) temperature 51.03 ◦ C
Bottom liquid (Lbot ) temperature 70.98 ◦ C

column. The pressure of the recycled liquid from the rectifying sec-
tion is equalized with that of the stripping section using a throttling
valve. In the configuration, the heat transferred through the internal
heat exchangers between the rectifying hot vapor and the stripping
cold liquid leads to the reflux flow for the rectifying section and
vapor flow for the stripping section. This results in reduction of the
reboiler heat load. But at the same time, an additional compressor
duty is involved in the thermally coupled column.
The rectifying section that includes the trim-condenser and
stripping section that combines the trim-reboiler have the same
number of stages (i.e., 10 theoretical stages). The feed is intro-
duced onto the top of the stripping section. The flash chamber used
with both the distillation configurations operates at 61.11 ◦ C and
415.56 kPa.
The dynamic simulator is developed for both conventional and
thermally coupled columns using the Aspen software package. The
simulated model structures consider the following assumptions:
• Liquid on the tray is perfectly mixed and incompressible.
• Vapor holdup in the column is negligible.
• Vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) is calculated using the
Soave–Redlich–Kwong (SRK) equation of state.
• Tray pressure drop (0.3 kPa/stage) is constant and same for all
trays.
• Liquid hydraulics is calculated from the Francis weir formula.
• Heat transfer is computed by UAT, where U denotes the over-
all heat transfer coefficient, A the heat transfer area and T the
temperature difference between the rectifying tray and stripping
tray.
• Temperature of cooling water used in the condensers of both the
columns is 20 ◦ C.
• Pressures of steams (LP steams) used in the reboilers of HIDBC
and CDBC are 101.33 and 163.14 kPa, respectively.
In the present work, constant values of heat transfer coefficients
are used, as generally employed (see Olujic, Sun, de Rijke, & Jansens,
2006) for reboilers (1000 W/m2 K) and condensers (800 W/m2 K),
respectively.
3. Thermodynamic feasibility of heat integration
It is true that if there is no heat integration between the rec-
tifying and stripping columns, the reboiler and condenser operate
on maximum head loads. Without considering internal tray-to-tray
heat transfer, the temperature for each stage in both the columns is
obtained. In this simulation, total number of stages (nT ) is 20, stage
pressure drop (P) is 0.3 kPa, compression ratio (CR) (=PR /PS ) is 2,
feed stage pressure is 405.43 kPa and reflux ratio (RR) is 1.2. It is
evident in Fig. 3 that although the temperature driving force varies
along the columns, it is always positive between all the rectifying
Fig. 3. Debutanizer stage temperature profiles (in this figure, stage numbering in
both the sections is started from top down).
and stripping column stages. When the rectifying section is hotter
than the stripping section, a heat integrated column configuration
with respect to design and operation is thermodynamically feasible.
So the example column is a suitable case for heat integration.
The feasibility regions of heat integration can be found from
simulated stage temperature profiles. It is evident that the first
three stages have relatively smaller driving forces. To enhance the
heat transfer in these trays, large amounts of heat exchange areas
are required. This could be impractical solution owing to a lim-
ited physical space available inside the columns. It is important to
mention that the thermal coupling should be recommended taking
into account the cost of energy and the total cost. It is suggested to
install the seven heat exchangers between the rectifying and strip-
ping stages, namely 4–13, 5–14, 6–15, 7–16, 8–17, 9–18, and 10–19.
The resulting configuration can be referred to as the partial HIDBC.
4. Steady state results
Product compositions of the proposed HIDBC are summarized
in Table 2. The pressure at the feed stage is 405.43 kPa, both for the
HIDBC and its conventional counterpart. The target material of the
multicomponent separation is supposed here to be nC4 . The desired
product purity in the distillate (xD,nC4 ) equals 0.47884 (∼0.479) for
the conventional column.
Both the conventional and heat integrated debutanizer pro-
cesses are simulated in Aspen Plus. In the present study, a
sensitivity analysis has been carried out in order to tune the design
and operating variables. It is unlikely that a particular set of tunable
data can provide best product specification with the consumption
of lowest amount of energy, and some compromise is usually neces-
sary. Here, the design variables considered are the total number of
stages and the product of the overall heat transfer coefficient and
the heat exchange area (UA), and the operating variables include
the compression ratio and reflux ratio. Stage pressure drop, P is
fixed at 0.3 kPa. In the sensitivity tests, the input and product spec-
ifications are kept same for both the distillation schemes. Note that
the product flow rates are fixed, but not the product purities.
It is worthy to mention that the energy consumption (Qcons ) of
the heat integrated column is calculated by adding the reboiler heat
duty (QR ) plus three times the compressor duty (Qcomp ).
Qcons = QR + 3Qcomp (1)
The factor of three for the compression duty is assumed taking
into consideration the fact that the compressor is driven by electric-
ity and that for the production of 1 kW of electricity approximately
 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305 1299

Fig. 4. The effect of compression ratio on (A) energy consumption; (B) distillate
product purity (xD,nC4 ). Fig. 5. The effect of stage pressure drop on (A) energy consumption; (B) distillate
product purity (xD,nC4 ).

3 kW of fuel has to be consumed due to inefficiencies in the elec-

tricity generation process. The heat duty reduction in a condenser It proves the successful application of heat integration concept to
does not lead to energy saving directly because the heat can be the commercial debutanizer process.
recovered and inexpensive coolant can be used (see Fukushima et
al., 2006). Temperatures of overhead vapors in the conventional 4.1.2. Effect of stage pressure drop
and heat integrated columns are 33.45 and 51.03 ◦ C, respectively. The influence of stage pressure drop on the distillate purity and
It is appropriate to use the tap water as a coolant. In this work, energy consumption is displayed in Fig. 5. This simulation exper-
the condenser duty is not included in the comparison of energy iment is carried out considering CR = 1.5 along with fixed nT , RR
consumption. and UA. Although the maximum product purity is obtained at stage
pressure drop of 0.3 kPa, the distillate composition starts falling
4.1. Sensitivity tests slowly with the further increase of P. This happens because of the
decrease in the flow rates inside the column. There is no significant
In the present study, a few parameter values of the conventional change noticed in the energy consumption.
column have been used in simulating the thermally coupled debu-
tanizer. These parameters include the total number of stages and 4.1.3. Effect of reflux ratio
stage pressure drop. Value of RR differs in both the columns. Other This simulation investigates the energy efficient distillation
parameters, namely CR and UA, are not considered in the CDBC. Sev- behavior in terms of product purity and energy consumption with
eral simulation runs have been conducted to examine the influence respect to reflux ratio. The results are obtained in Fig. 6 with keep-
of important parameters. ing the CR, nT , P and UA unchanged. Clearly, the RR of 1 provides
the maximum product purity (=0.479). The nC4 composition at the
4.1.1. Selection of compression ratio top decreases with the increase of reflux ratio beyond 1. On the
Fig. 4 shows how the compression ratio affects the product other hand, the overall energy consumption constantly increases
purity (xD,nC4 ) and overall energy consumption (Qcons ) of the heat with the increase of reflux ratio mainly due to the increasing heat
integrated process keeping the input conditions and product flows load in the reboiler.
same for both the heat integrated column and its conventional
counterpart. In this test, UA and RR are chosen 0.6 kW/K stage
and 1.0, respectively. Other two parameter values (nT = 20 and
P = 0.3 kPa) are adopted from the conventional process simula-
tor. It is evident that with the increase of CR, the product purity
increases. But at the same time, the overall energy consumption
also increases. When the compression ratio goes above 1.5, there
is a negligible increase of product composition but a significant
increase of energy consumption. It is therefore reasonable to select
the compression ratio of 1.5. This CR provides the same product
flows as well as composition for both the columns.
In this situation, it is observed that there is almost no differ-
ence between the temperatures of Trays 4 and 13, and Trays 5
and 14. Accordingly, two internal heat exchangers connecting these
trays have been removed from the HIDBC. The final partially heat
integrated column configuration has total 5 tray-to-tray (6–15,
7–16, 8–17, 9–18, and 10–19) heat exchangers and the cut off
value of Tmin used is ∼11 ◦ C. The overall energy consumption by
the thermally integrated column and its conventional counterpart
is obtained as 923.58 and 1655.93 kW, respectively. This repre- Fig. 6. The effect of reflux ratio on (A) energy consumption; (B) distillate product
sents an energy saving (=[(QCDBC − QHIDBC )/QCDBC ] × 100) of 44.23%. purity (xD,nC4 ).
1300 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305

Table 3
Cost estimating formula (see Douglas, 1988) and parameter values (see Lin & Yu,
2004; Olujic et al., 2006).
 M&S 
Column shell: 280
101.9Dc1.066 Lc0.802 (cin + cm cp )
where, M & S
= 950,cin = 2.18, cm = 3.67 and cp = 1.2.
M&S
Column tray: 280
4.7Dc1.55 Lc (cs + ct + cm )
where, cs = 1, ct = 0 and cm = 1.7. In the above two formulas, diameter Dc
and height Lc arein ft.
M&S
Heat exchanger: 280
101.3A0.65 (cin + cm (ct + cp ))
where, cin = 2.29, cm = 3.75, ct = 0.1 and cp = 1.35. Here, heat transfer
area A is in ft
2
. 
M&S 0.82
Compressor: 280
2047.24(BP)
where, BP = 115.58 kW for the proposed heat integrated scheme. This
correlation of centrifugal compressor is valid in the range of 22 < BP
(kW) < 7457.

Fig. 7. The effect of total number of stages on (A) energy consumption; (B) distillate
product purity (xD,nC4 ).
4.1.4. Effect of total number of stages
Fig. 7 illustrates the product composition and energy consump-
tion profiles with respect to changes in the total number of stages.
In this study, other four parameter values remain unaltered. It is
observed that the distillate purity increases with the increase of nT .
However, the total number of stages more than 20 does not affect
the purity that much. It is evident that there is a little effect on the
energy consumption.
4.1.5. Effect of UA
The energy integrated column with CR of 1.5, nT of 20, RR of
1 and P of 0.3 kPa is chosen as a test process. The UA has been
varied from 0.1 to 2 kW/K stage and the corresponding composi-
tion and energy consumption profiles are presented in Fig. 8. With
the increase of UA, the product composition goes up. At the same
time, the energy saving slightly increases due to the increased heat
exchange. It is reasonable to select the UA of 0.6 kW/K stage in
order to meet the input and output specifications same for both
the columns.
The subsequent discussion is based on the partially heat inte-
grated column configuration having CR of 1.5, nT of 20, RR of 1, P
of 0.3 kPa and UA of 0.6 kW/K stage.
5. Economic evaluation
It is realized that the energy integration in a distillation col-
umn provides a large energy saving but at the cost of an increased
capital investment. This work presents an economic comparison in
terms of total annual cost (TAC) between the conventional and heat
integrated debutanizer schemes for the typical multicomponent
mixture separation.
capital investment (CI)
TAC($/yr) = operating cost (OC) +
payback period (T )
The capital investment includes the cost of equipments (flash
drum, distillation column(s), heat exchangers and compressor) and
the operating cost includes the cost of utilities (heating steam,
cooling water and electricity) for a year containing 8000 operat-
ing hours. The annual capital investment is calculated assuming a
payback period of 3 years. The capital cost and operation cost of the
entire plant are estimated using the correlations given in Douglas
(1988).
Table 3 reports the formula used for cost estimation and the
parameter values. The cost of utilities is tabulated in Table 4. The
steam used in reboilers of both the columns is considered low
pressure (LP) steam in the cost estimation. It is reasonable to give
a penalty to the cost estimation of the heat integrated column
because of the difficulty associated in installation of the internal
heat transfer arrangements. In this calculation, a penalty of 20%
of capital investment is considered for the HIDBC. It can be seen
from Table 5 that the partially heat integrated column provides a
49% reduction in operating cost, but at an expense of 1.3 times more
fixed investment than its conventional counterpart. However, close
to 14.4% saving in total annual cost is achieved due to the internal
thermal coupling.

6. Controllability analysis

Nonlinear simulation is carried out in Aspen Dynamics to study

the dynamics and control of the proposed partially heat integrated
debutanizer process. Here, the nC4 composition in the distillate
(xD,nC4 ) and nC5 composition in the bottom product (xB,nC5 ) are
considered as controlled variables, and reflux flow rate (R) and heat
input to the reboiler (QR ) are the respective manipulated inputs.

Table 4
Details of utilities (see Huang, Shan, Zhu, & Qian, 2008).

Item Value

LP steam ($/ton) 17
HP steam ($/ton) 17 (0.95 + 0.05PH )
Cooling water ($/ton) 0.06
Fig. 8. The effect of UA on (A) energy consumption; (B) distillate product purity
Electricity ($/kW h) 0.084
(xD,nC4 ).
 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305 1301

Table 5 and they work reasonably well. Dual-loop composition and tem-
Comparison of estimated capital (main equipment) and operating (utilities per year)
perature controllers (PI) are tuned using the Tyreus–Luyben tuning
costs.
approach. The relay-feedback method is used to obtain the ultimate
Item HIDBC CDBC gain and ultimate period.
Capital cost ($)
(a) Flash drum (a) 2.09 × 105 (a) 2.09 × 105 6.1. Composition control
(b) Column shell (b) 1.98 × 105 (b) 2.67 × 105
(c) Column trays (c) 1.25 × 104 (c) 2.31 × 104
In the partially heat integrated debutanizer with dual-
(d) Heat exchanger (d) 3.80 × 105 (d) 5.65 × 105
(e) Compressor (e) 3.41 × 105 (e) 0.0 composition control scheme, a measurement lag of 60 s is used
Total capital cost ($) 11.40 × 105 + 20% = 13.68 × 105 10.64 × 105 in both the composition loops. Values of tuning parameters are
Operating cost ($/yr)
obtained as: (i) KC = 15 and  i = 7 min with direct action for xD,nC4 −
(a) Heating steam (a) 1.25 × 105 (a) 3.66 × 105 R loop, and (ii) KC = 15 and  i = 4 min with reverse action for xB,nC5 −
(b) Cooling water (b) 2.1 × 104 (b) 7.26 × 104 QR loop.
(c) Electricity (c) 7.77 × 104 (c) 0.0
Total operating cost ($/yr) 2.24 × 105 4.39 × 105
6.1.1. Set point tracking performance
TAC ($/yr) 6.80 × 105 7.94 × 105
In Fig. 9, the process dynamics with respect to two consecu-
tive set point step changes in xD,nC4 (step decrease from 0.4788 to
0.4478 at time = 1.67 hr followed by a step increase from 0.4478
It should be noted that in the control system of the distillation to 0.4788 at time = 3.21 h) are depicted. The HIDBC configuration
process, the liquid level, and column pressure controls constitute is strongly interactive and it is evident in the figure. However,
inventory control, maintaining the basic operation of the column. the multi-loop PI structure provides reasonably good servo per-
Therefore, here emphasis is placed on the response of composi- formance.
tion and temperature control methodologies to maintain desired
product quality. 6.1.2. Disturbance rejection performance
In the proposed closed-loop study, only traditional proportional Fig. 10 illustrates the regulatory response of the energy efficient
integral (PI) controllers have been considered in a decentralized debutanizer column when it is subject to a pulse change in flash
(single input/single output) environment. The liquid capacities in temperature (step increase from 61.11 to 68.94 ◦ C at time = 1.76 h
the base of the distillation column and in the overhead reflux followed by step decrease from 68.94 to 61.11 ◦ C at time = 2.98 h).
accumulator are simply being used as surge volumes. Hence, main- Despite loop interaction and process nonlinearity, the composition
taining these liquid levels at certain values is not needed, and P-only controller shows its ability for tackling this situation efficiently.
controllers with proportional gain of 2 are used on all three liquid
levels. The rectifying section pressure is controlled by manipulating 6.2. Temperature control
the condenser heat duty. To maintain the stripping column pres-
sure, the overhead vapor flow is adjusted. As suggested by Luyben It is fact that the composition analyzers are expensive, require
(2004), the default pressure controllers in Aspen Dynamics are used high maintenance and introduce dead-time into the control loop.

Fig. 9. Set point tracking performance of the closed-loop HIDBC with a pulse change in xD,nC4 (step decrease from 0.4788 to 0.4478 at time = 1.67 h followed by a step increase
from 0.4478 to 0.4788 at time = 3.21 h). (A) for xD,nC4 − R loop and (B) for xB,nC5 − QR loop.
1302 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305
Fig. 10. Disturbance rejection performance of the closed-loop HIDBC with a pulse change in flash temperature (step increase from 61.11 to 68.94 ◦ C at time = 1.76 h followed
by step decrease from 68.94 to 61.11 ◦ C at time = 2.98 h). (A) for xD,nC4 − R loop and (B) for xB,nC5 − QR loop.
Therefore, a temperature control scheme for the configured HIDBC
is proposed as an alternative to the dual-loop composition con-
troller described above. Here, also the same level and pressure
controllers are used.
The selection of the trays to temperature control is one of the
main issues. For this purpose, the gain matrix between the inputs (R
and QR ) and the outputs (the temperatures on all trays) is computed
numerically by running the rigorous steady state simulator. The
singular-value decomposition method is used to indicate the most
sensitive trays based on the steady state gains. It is evident from Fig.
11 that the steady state gains between the tray temperatures and
inputs are positive in some sections of the column and negative in
others. It reveals that the action of the two-temperature controllers
Fig. 11. Gains and SVD results for the HIDBC.
(direct or reverse acting) can be different depending on what trays
are selected.
6.2.1. Steady state gains and SVD analysis
The steady state gains KR (=T/R) and KQR (= T /QR ), and
their SVD results presented by UR and UQR are demonstrated in Fig.
11. It should be noted that these gains are not normalized, and KR
and KQR have the units of [◦ C(kg/h)−1 ] and [◦ C(kJ/h)−1 ], respectively.
The steady state gains must correspond to a linearized version
of the process. As demonstrated by Kaymak and Luyben (2006),
determining the gains numerically requires that very small changes
must be made in the inputs. The procedure is to compute the steady
state gains for decreasing magnitudes of input changes. When the
gains stop changing as the increment is decreased, one can assume
the true linearized gains have been found.
As mentioned, the two-temperature control structure has been
employed around the partially heat integrated column. Based on
the SVD analysis, one of the trays in between 2 and 10 should be
selected for the rectifying column and the second controlled tray
in between 11 and 19 can be chosen for the stripping column.
It is obvious from Fig. 11 that the steady state gains between
tray temperatures and the reflux rate R are always negative (an
increase in R decreases tray temperature) for all trays. But for the
case of reboiler duty, few gains are negative and rests are positive.
The figure also shows that the steady state gains with respect to
R have the biggest magnitudes in the rectifying section and the
biggest magnitudes of steady state gains KQR are observed in the
stripping section.
The SVD analysis, looking at the UR and UQR parameters shown
in the lower graph in Fig. 11, suggests that Trays 5 and 19 are the
most sensitive stages in the rectifying and stripping section, respec-
tively. Therefore, temperatures of Trays 5 and 19 are selected as
controlled variables, and the corresponding manipulated variables
 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305 1303

Fig. 12. Set point tracking performance of the closed-loop HIDBC with a pulse change in the temperature of rectifying Tray 5 (step increase from 56.52 to 61.52 ◦ C at
time = 1.63 h and then step decrease from 61.52 to 56.52 ◦ C at time = 2.82 h). (A) for T5 –R loop and (B) for T19 –QR loop.

are R and QR . It is worthy to mention that the former tempera- 6.2.2. Control performance
ture loop (T5 − R) has direct acting and the latter one (T19 − QR ) has In the typical HIDBC with dual-temperature control configura-
reverse acting controller. This is because T5 /R is negative and tion, a measurement lag of 30 s is used in both the temperature
T19 /QR is positive in sign. loops. Values of tuning parameters are obtained as: (i) KC = 15 and

Fig. 13. Set point tracking performance of the closed-loop HIDBC with a pulse change in the temperature of stripping Tray 19 (step increase from 60.97 to 64.97 ◦ C at
time = 1.7 h and then step decrease from 64.97 to 60.97 ◦ C at time = 2.83 h). (A) for T5 –R loop and (B) for T19 –QR loop.
1304 A.K. Jana, S.V. Mali / Computers and Chemical Engineering 34 (2010) 1296–1305
Fig. 14. Disturbance rejection performance of the closed-loop HIDBC with a pulse change in flash pressure (step increase from 415.56 to 466.12 kPa at time = 1.7 h and then
step decrease from 466.12 to 415.56 kPa at time = 2.65 h). (A) for T5 –R loop and (B) for T19 –QR loop.
 i = 7 min with direct action for T5 –R loop, and (ii) KC = 25 and
 i = 2 min with reverse action for T19 –QR loop.
6.2.2.1. Set point tracking performance. In the servo performance
study, the effect of a pulse change in the set point of Tray 5 tem-
perature (step increase from 56.52 to 61.52 ◦ C at time = 1.63 h and
then step decrease from 61.52 to 56.52 ◦ C at time = 2.82 h) has been
presented in Fig. 12. Whereas, Fig. 13 considers two consecutive
set point step changes in Tray 19 temperature (step increase from
60.97 to 64.97 ◦ C at time = 1.7 h and then step decrease from 64.97
to 60.97 ◦ C at time = 2.83 h). The controlled process exhibits smooth
response, small maximum deviation and short settling time.
6.2.2.2. Disturbance rejection performance. In Fig. 14, the regula-
tory response of the HIDBC is displayed when it is in the face of
a pulse change in feed flash pressure (step increase from 415.56
to 466.12 kPa at time = 1.7 h and then step decrease from 466.12 to
415.56 kPa at time = 2.65 h). The figure shows satisfactory closed-
loop disturbance rejection performance.
7. Conclusions
The representative refinery debutanizer column fractionates an
eight-component hydrocarbon mixture. In order to improve the
thermal efficiency and reduce the total annual cost, the exam-
ple commercial-scale column is configured with heat integration
between rectifying and stripping sections. A partial heat integration
is identified based on the thermodynamic feasibility study. Along
with the tuning of compression ratio, a systematic parametric anal-
ysis is presented to investigate the effect of important parameters
on product purity and energy consumption. However, the config-
uration developed cannot be considered as an optimal design and
can be used as a good initialization point for an MINLP optimization
procedure. In the next, an economic comparison between the CDBC
and the proposed HIDBC is reported. The potential energy integra-
tion leads to achieving up to 44% energy saving and more than 14%
saving in total annual cost. This work devises a control scheme that
considers the control of most sensitive tray temperatures. Unlike
the intensified i-HIDiC, the proposed partially heat integrated col-
umn provides smooth closed-loop performance. We also discuss
the issues of the selection of the trays whose temperatures are to
be controlled.
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