Control behaviour of thermally coupled distillation sequences

The controllability properties of thermally coupled distillation sequences for the separation of ternary mixtures are compared with those of the conventional direct and indirect sequences. Closed loop responses to set point changes were performed, and controllers were tuned to minimize their ISE values. The results indicate that the integrated systems exhibit better control properties than sequences based on conventional distillation columns. This result provides a further incentive for the use of those integrated systems.