ADVANCED CONTROL OF A DISTILLATION COLUMN

A pilot-scale methanol-water distillation column has been purpose built in the Chemical Engineering Department as a test bed for advanced control algorithms. A computer is interfaced to the column via a serial link to two Eurotherm controllers, making implementation of algorithms simple and quick. Simple P.I.D. control has been implemented as a benchmark with Generalized Predictive Control implemented as an example of an advanced linear adaptive control algorithm. A simple, error driven, modification to the classical Generalized Predictive Control algorithm has been proposed and tested on the distillation column and gives improvement over its predecessor. Furthermore, a simple non-linear neural net based controller has also been tested on the distillation column and found to give better performance than fixed parameter GPC.