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Distillation
Column Control

09
APR
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Distillation: Introduction to Control

 Distillation Column Control  controlguru

By Jim Riggs1
Background
Approximately 40,000 distillation columns are operated in
the U.S. chemical process industries and they comprise 95% of
the separation processes for these industries. Because
distillation operation directly affects product quality, process
production rates and utility usage, the economic importance
of distillation control is clear. Distillation control is a
challenging problem because of the following factors:
Process nonlinearity
Multivariable coupling
Severe disturbances
Nonstationary behavior
Distillation columns exhibit static nonlinearity because

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impurity levels asymptotically approach zero. The impurity
level in the overhead product is the concentration of the
heavy key, and the impurity level in the bottoms product is
the concentration of the light key. Nonlinear dynamics, i.e.,
variations in time constants with the size and direction of an
input change, and static nonlinearity are much more
pronounced for columns that produce high-purity products,
e.g., columns that have impurity levels less than 1%.
Coupling is significant when the composition of both
overhead and bottoms products are being controlled. Columns
are affected by a variety of disturbances, particularly feed
composition and flow upsets. Nonstationary behavior stems
from changes in tray efficiencies caused by entertainment or
fouling.
Improved distillation control is characterized by a reduction in
the variability of the impurities in the products. Meeting the
specification requirements on the variability of final products
can make the difference between the product being a high
value-added product with large market demand and being a
low-valued product with a small market demand.
For customers who purchase the products produced by
distillation columns as feedstock for their processes, the
variability of the feedstock can directly affect the quality of
the products they produce, e.g., the variability in the
monomer feed to a polymerization process can directly affect
the mechanical properties of the resulting polymer produced.
In addition, control performance can affect plant processing
rates and utility usage. After the variability of a product has
been reduced, the set point for the impurity in the product
can be increased, moving the set point closer to the
specification limit. If this column is the bottleneck for the
process, then increasing the average impurity level, i.e.,
moving the impurity set point closer to the specification limit,
allows greater plant processing rates.
Even if the column in question is not a bottleneck, moving
the impurity set point closer to the specification limit reduces
the utility usage for the column. While each of these factors
can be economically important for large-scale processes, the
order of economic importance is usually product quality first,
followed by process throughput and finally utility reductions.
Column Schematic
A schematic of a binary distillation column with one feed and
two products is shown in Figure 1:

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Material balance and energy balance effects
Combining an overall steady-state material balance with the
light component material balance for a binary separation
yields:

Rearranging results in:

This equation indicates that as the flow rate of the distillate

product, D, decreases while keeping F, z and x constant, the
purity of the overhead product, y, increases. Likewise, as D
increases, its purity decreases.
Because the sum of the product flows must equal the feed
rate at steady state, when one product becomes more pure,
the other product must get less pure. This is shown
graphically in Figure 2. This is an example of the material
balance effect in which the product impurity level varies
directly with the flow rate of the corresponding product.

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Another key factor that affects product purities is the energy
input to the column, which determines the vapor rate, V, up
the column. As the energy input to the column increases, the
separation of the light and heavy components usually
increases (Figure 2). One measure of the separation is the
separation factor, S, which is given by

As the impurity levels in the products decrease (i.e., y®1

and/or x®0), S increases.
Another way to understand the effect of an increase in
energy input to the column is to consider the vapor/liquid
traffic inside the column. If V increases while D and B are kept
constant, the reflux, L, increases by the same amount as V. As
a result, the reflux ratio, L/D, increases. This increase in
vapor/liquid traffic inside the column causes a decrease in the
impurities in the products for the same D/F ratio (Figure 2).
When evaluating how a column responds in a control
situation, it is helpful to remember that the energy input to the
column generally determines the degree of separation that the
column can achieve while the material balance (i.e., D/F)
determines how the separation is allocated between the two
products.
Vapor and Liquid Dynamics
The difference between vapor and liquid dynamics in a
distillation column can contribute to interesting composition
dynamic behavior. For all but very-high-pressure columns, i.e.,
those operating near the critical pressure of the light key, a
change in V in the reboiler can be observed in the overhead in
just a few seconds while a change in the reflux flow rate
requires several minutes to reach the reboiler.
The hydraulic response of a tray depends on the accumulation
or depletion of liquid on it. The hydraulic time constant for
flow from a tray typically ranges between 3 and 10 seconds.
As a result, for a column with 50 or more trays, the overall
hydraulic response time is on the order of several minutes.
As an example of the effect of the difference between liquid
and vapor dynamics, consider the overhead product purity for
an increase in V for a column in which the accumulator level
sets the reflux flow rate and the distillate rate is held
constant. Initially, the increase in vapor flow moves up the
column rapidly while the liquid flow down the column remains
relatively constant because the reflux rate is set by the level
controller on the accumulator.
In the rectifying section, the L/V ratio determines the
separating power of that section. As a result of the increase
in V, the concentration of the impurity in the overhead
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increases initially. The increase in V begins to increase the
level in the accumulator, which, after some time, leads to an
increase in the reflux flow. As the increased reflux flow slowly
makes its way down the rectifying section, L/V increases,
causing a decrease in the impurity level in the overhead
product. Therefore, for this scenario, an increase in V results
in an inverse response in the concentration of the overhead
product due to the difference in vapor and liquid dynamic in
the column.
Entrainment
For columns operating at pressures less than about 165 psia,
as V increases above 80% of flood conditions, droplets of liquid
from the active area of the tray are blown in the vapor to the
tray above, thus reducing the separation efficiency of the
column. For certain vacuum columns, the tray efficiency can
drop as much as 30% as the boilup rate increases above 80%
of flood. 100% of flood corresponds to the condition for which
an increase in vapor rate results in a decrease in separation
for the column.
As the tray efficiency decreases because of increased
entrainment, the process gain decreases, requiring larger
changes in the manipulated variables to obtain the same
change in the product impurity levels.
Structure Packed Columns
Columns that use sections of structured packing offer
significant efficiency advantages over trayed columns for
low-pressure applications because there is less pressure drop
across the structured packing than across a corresponding set
of trays. Because of the low liquid holdup on structured
packing, these columns have faster composition dynamics
than trayed columns.
The liquid holdup on the structured packing is low enough
that the composition profile through the packing reaches its
steady-state profile much more quickly than the reboiler and
accumulator. For a column with structured packing, the
dynamic lag of the accumulator and the reboiler primarily
determine the dynamic response of the product compositions.
More on Distillation Control
This is the first of a series on distillation control. The next
article presents the major disturbances affecting composition
control and the importance of properly functioning regulatory
controls.
_______
1. This material is reprinted from Chemical Process Control, 2nd
Ed. with the permission of the publisher: Ferret Publishing
(806 747 3872).

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 About the Author
Jim Riggs is a professor of chemical engineering at Texas Tech
University, where he has been since 1983. He has served as
an industrial consultant and presented a number of industrial
short courses on various topics relating to process control. He
is the author of several popular chemical engineering
textbooks and co-founded the Texas Tech Process Control
Consortium in 1992.
Jim Riggs
Department of Chemical Engineering
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas 79410
Email: jim.riggs@ttu.edu

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