Novel Control Structure Design of Differential Pressure Thermally Coupled Reactive Distillation for Methyl Acetate Hydrolysis

In this paper, the novel control structures of differential pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation process for methyl acetate hydrolysis were proposed. The RadFrac module of Aspen Plus was adopted in the steady-state simula-tion. Sensitive analysis was applied to find the stable initial value and provide a basis for the improved control structure de-sign. The Aspen Dynamics software was adopted to study the process dynamic behaviors, and two novel control structures provided with feed ratio controllers and sensitive tray temperature controllers were proposed. The reflux ratio controllers were applied in the improved novel control structures. Both control structures abandoned the composition controllers that were replaced by simpler controllers with which the product purity could meet the specification requiring under a ± 20％ disturbance to the total feed flowrate / MeAc composition.