APPLICATION OF MULTIVARIABLE NONLINEAR ADAPTIVE GENERIC MODEL CONTROL TO A PACKED DISTILLATION COLUMN

Nonlinear adaptive generic model control and self-tuning PID control systems were applied to control the top and bottom product temperature of a packed distillation column separating methanol-water mixture. In the first control algorithm, an adaptive generic model control (AGMC) structure was proposed for dual temperature control of the system. In the second control algorithm, nonlinear self tuning PID (NLSTPID) control based on pole-placement technique was used to control the same system. For NLSTPID control purposes pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS) signal and recursive identification algorithm were used to estimate the relevant parameters of a polynomial NARMAX model. In this work, real-time application has been carried out. In both dynamic and control studies, perturbations in feed composition were utilized as the disturbance, and the reboiler heat duty and the reflux ratio were selected as the manipulated variables. The control performances have been obtained by using ISE and, in general, AGMC results were better than those of the STPID control algorithm.