Design and Control of Extraction Distillation for Dehydration of Tetrahydrofuran

Design and control of an extractive distillation system for tetrahydrofuran (THF) dehydration with ethylene glycol as entrainer is investigated. The main module is a two-column system containing an extractive distillation column, whose top stream is the desired product THF, and an entrainer recovery column. Economic analysis with total annual cost as the objective function is developed. Two kinds of control strategies are explored for THF dehydration. The responses reveal that the control structure with fixed reflux ratio cannot maintain the bottom liquid level of the entrainer recovery column, while the control scheme with fixed reboiler heat duty/feed flow ratio exhibits good control performance in spite of large deviations in feed flow rate and feed composition.