The interactions of design, control and operability in reactive distillation systems

In this work the design and control of a reactive distillation column, described by a rigorous dynamic model, is tackled via two different optimization approaches. In the first, the steady-state process design and the control system are optimized sequentially. It is shown that operability is a strong function of the process design and potential operability bottlenecks are identified. In the second approach, the process design and the control system are optimized simultaneously leading to a more economically beneficial and better controlled system than that obtained using the sequential approach. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.