Abstract
Separation of dimethyl carbonate/methanol azeotropic mixture by using pressure-swing distillation process has been a hot-point in the study of the synthesis process of dimethyl carbonate by urea methanolysis method. This study updates the work of the writers (Ind. Eng. Chem. Res, 2013, 52, 11463–11478), which explores the dynamic control structure of the three-column separation dimethyl carbonate (DMC)/methanol (MeOH) process from an actual pilot plant. At first, the conventional DMC/MeOH separation process in the pilot test of the DMC synthesis process through alcoholysis of urea was described in detail. Then an optimized control structure for the entire DMC/MeOH separation unit was obtained by implementing a general heuristic design procedure. An economic analysis was performed to evaluate the optimized process. Finally, three dynamic control schemes were proposed and evaluated with several large disturbances, an improved control scheme CS3, using the multiplier blocks “QR1/F1” and “RR1” in T1, “QR1/F1” and “R/F” in both T2 and T3, outperformed CS1 and CS2 by maintaining the product specification in each column.
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Abbreviations
- TAC:
-
total annual cost [$/year]
- N T :
-
total number of column trays
- N F :
-
feed tray location of a column
- D:
-
distillate flowrate [kmol/s]
- B:
-
bottom flowrate [kmol/s]
- RR:
-
reflux ratio
- R/F:
-
ratio
- VS/F:
-
ratio of the vapor flowrate from the bottom of the column to the feed flowrate
- LR :
-
reflux flow
- VR :
-
vapor flowrate on the second stage in distillation column
- LS :
-
liquid flowrate on the second stage of the column
- VS :
-
vapor flowrate from the bottom of the column
- D:
-
column diameter [m]
- D:
-
distillate flowrate [kmol/s]
- B:
-
bottom flowrate [kmol/s]
- QR :
-
reboiler heat input [GJ/h]
- QC :
-
condenser heat removal [GJ/h]
- AC :
-
reboiler heat transfer area [m2]
- AR :
-
condenser heat transfer area [m2]
- Shell:
-
shell capital cost [106 $]
- HX:
-
heat exchanger cost [106 $]
- Energy:
-
energy cost per year [106 $/y]
- PI:
-
proportional and integral
- K c :
-
gain
- τ 1 :
-
integral time
- CSn:
-
nth control strategy
- QR/F:
-
ratio of reboiler heat input to feed
- XB1 :
-
MeOH purity at the bottoms of the concentration column [kg/kg]
- XB2 :
-
MeOH purity at the bottoms of the pressured column [kg/kg]
- XB3 :
-
DMC purity at the bottoms of the refinery column [kg/kg]
- XD1 :
-
MeOH purity in the distillate stream of the concentration column [kg/kg]
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Science Foundation of North University of China (2015): Design and Control of Pressure-Swing separation of Azeotrope in Process Equipment (No: 110246) and Foundation of Shanxi Province Key Laboratory of Higee-Oriented Chemical Engineering (No: CZL2020-06).
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Wei, HM., Gao, Q., Jiao, Wz. et al. Dynamic simulation and control of a triple column process for dimethyl carbonate-methanol separation. Korean J. Chem. Eng. 39, 3190–3203 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11814-022-1259-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11814-022-1259-0