PLANTWIDE CONTROL STRUCTURE DESIGN FOR CUMENE PROCESS

Abstract

Plantwide control structure design relies on two basic principles, namely, maintaining operating conditions at designed values and quick rejecting disturbance and/or directing disturbances to appropriate paths. The purpose of this research is to illustrate the application of the plantwide control structure design procedure of Wongsri (2012) for cumene process. The design procedure consists of 5 stages with 8 steps which emphasis on the establishment of a fixture plant by regulating material component flow rates using their quantifiers and handlers, and proper disturbance management. The new control structure designs are evaluated using Aspen HYSYS dynamic simulator and compared their performance with the selected base case (W. L. Luyben, Design and Control of the Cumene Process, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 49, No. 2, 2010: 719-734). Two new design structures (CS2 and CS3) give better performance than the base case because of their good maintaining plant conditions and better disturbance handlings.