Design and control of different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation for synthesis of isoamyl acetate

In this paper, a steady state model and three control structures of different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation process for isoamyl acetate synthesis are proposed. The process is firstly designed in Aspen Plus to build a steady state model, economic analysis is then adopted to optimize process parameters. The optimized process shows 39.65% saving on operating cost and 1.25–19.05% saving on TAC with the payback period varies from 5 to 10 years. Three control structures including one basic structure (BC) and two improved structures (IC1, IC2) are proposed. IC1 uses a composition/feed ratio controller to decrease residual errors, and a feed composition ratio controller is added in IC2 to achieve better control behaviors. ±10% feed flowrate/feed water composition disturbances are added to the control structures and the control behaviors are studied. The selections of control structures are based on the control behaviors. IC2 with better control behaviors under feed composition disturbance is recommend for the process.