Plantwide control structure design for an auto-refrigerated alkylation process

Abstract

The alkylation process is widely used in oil refinery as a process to produce an alkylate product which is very useful for internal combustion engines. The process operated by reacting isobutene with olefins (primarily mixture of butane-butylene) and adding the sulfuric acid catalyst. The process is carried out in exothermic reactions in a series of agitated reactors. The separation sections with two distillations are then installed to extract the desirable products and return the useful remnant back to the recycled stream. This research has been developed by using plantwide control procedure of Wongsri (2012) to improve the control structure of an auto-refrigerated alkylation process which can be referred as multi-unit process containing several unit operations. The procedure used heuristics method to find the fixture plant which is appropriate in handing material and heat disturbances entering the process. Wherefore, a commercial dynamics simulator is used to design and simulate the alkylation process at steady state and dynamic conditions.