CONTROL OF A REACTOR-FLASHER SYSTEM

Abstract

This paper presents a case study in which several multivariable control strategies were tested for a reactor-flasher system of an industrial chemical process. This reactor-flasher system which has three manipulated variables and three controlled variables is open loop unstable. Since the system variables interact severely, controlling the system is very difficult with the traditional PID control. We examined various control strategies such as multiloop single variable control, modified single variable control with compensators, and PI control combined with Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR), Linear Quadratic Gaussian(LQG)/Loop Transfer Recovery(LTR) and Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) combined with LQR. DMC combined with LQR showed better control performance than the others while remaining robust in the face of modeling errors.