DEPARTMENT OF PROCESS ENGINEERING

PROCESS CONTROL CI 426

EXTRA NOTES ON RATIO CONTROL

A ratio control scheme is to be used to maintain a stoichiometric ratio of H2 and N2 as the feed to an
ammonia synthesis reactor. Individual flow controllers will be used for both streams.

(1) Draw a schematic diagram of the ration control scheme.

(2) Specific the gain for the ratio station.

Use the following information:

(a) The flow transmitters have built in square root extractors. The spans of the transmitters are
30 L/min for H2 and 15 L/min for N2.
(b) The control valves are pneumatic
(c) Each I/P transducer has a gain of 0.75psi/mA.
(d) The ratio station is electronic with 4-20 mA input and output.

Solution

We assume that the volumetric feed ration should be the same as the stoichiometric ratio. We
arbitrarily decide that the H2 stream is considered to be the disturbance variable. The ratio station is
a device with an adjustable gain. The input to the station is the measured flowrate of the H2 stream
dm. The output from the ration station serves as the set point for the N2 flow control loop and is
calculated as usp=KRdm. For this problem we also need to include the spans of the transmitters so
that

𝑆% 1 30 2
𝐾" = 𝑅% = =
𝑆' 3 15 3