Design and control of a p-xylene oxidation process

The p-xylene(PX) oxidation process is of great industrial importance because of the strong demand of the global polyester fiber.A steady-state model of the PX oxidation has been studied by many researchers.In our previous work,a novel industrial p-xylene oxidation reactor model using the free radical mechanism based kinetics has been developed.However,the disturbances such as production rate change,feed composition variability and reactor temperature changes widely exist in the industry process.In this paper,dynamic simulation of the PX oxidation reactor was designed by Aspen Dynamics and used to develop an effective plantwide control structure,which was capable of effectively handling the disturbances in the load and the temperature of the reactor.Step responses of the control structure to the disturbances were shown and served as the foundation of the smooth operation and advanced control strategy of this process in our future work.

Unique influences of reboiler inventory control on the operation of totally reboiled reactive distillation columns

In this work,the dynamics and operation of the totally reboiled reactive distillation columns are visualized in terms of transfer function based process models.This kind of processes is found to be characterized by underdamped step responses due to the special topological configuration and the intricate interplay between the reaction operation and the separation operation involved.The under-dampness can be substantially alleviated through the tight inventory control of bottom reboiler and this presents beneficial effects to process dynamics and operation.Two totally reboiled reactive distillation columns,separating,respectively,a hypothetical synthesis reaction from reactants A and B to product C,and a real decomposition reaction from 1,4-butanediol to tetrahydrofuran and water,are employed to demonstrate these uncommon behaviors.The results obtained give full support to the above qualitative interpretation.Despite the strong influences of reaction kinetics and thermodynamic properties of the reacting mixtures,the totally reboiled reactive distillation columns are generally considered to present such unique behaviors and require tight inventory control of bottom reboiler to facilitate their control system development.

Interpreting the dynamic effect of internal heat integration on reactive distillation columns

In this work,the impact of internal heat integration upon process dynamics and controllability by superposing reactive section onto stripping section,relocating feed locations,and redistributing catalyst within the reactive section is explored based on a hypothetical ideal reactive distillation system containing an exothermic reaction:A + BC + D.Steady state operation analysis and closed-loop controllability evaluation are carried out by comparing the process designs with and without the consideration of internal heat integration.For superposing reactive section onto stripping section,favorable effect is aroused due to its low sensitivities to the changes in operating condition.For ascending the lower feed stage,somewhat detrimental effect occurs because of the accompanied adverse internal heat integration and strong sensitivity to the changes in operating condition.For descending the upper feed stage,serious detrimental effect happens because of the introduced adverse internal heat integration and strong sensitivity to the changes in operating condition.For redistributing catalyst in the reactive section,fairly small negative influence is aroused by the sensitivity to the changes in operating condition.When reinforcing internal heat integration with a combinatorial use of these three strategies,the decent of the upper feed stage should be avoided in process development.Although the conclusions are derived based on the hypothetical ideal reactive distillation column studied,they are considered to be of general significance to the design and operation of other reactive distillation columns.

Research on fault detection method for heat pump air conditioning system under cold weather

Building energy consumption accounts for nearly 40% of global energy consumption, HVAC （Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning） systems are the major building energy consumers, and as one type of HVAC systems, the heat pump air conditioning system, which is more energy-efficient compared to the traditional air conditioning system, is being more widely used to save energy. However, in northern China, extreme climatic conditions increase the cooling and heating load of the heat pump air conditioning system and accelerate the aging of the equipment, and the sensor may detect drifted parameters owing to climate change. This non-linear drifted parameter increases the false alarm rate of the fault detection and the need for unnecessary troubleshooting. In order to overcome the impact of the device aging and the drifted parameter, a Kalman filter and SPC （statistical process control） fault detection method are introduced in this paper. In this method, the model parameter and its standard variance can he estimated by Kalman filter based on the gray model and the real-time data of the air conditioning system. Further, by using SPC to construct the dynamic control limits, false alarm rate is reduced. And this paper mainly focuses on the cold machine failure in the component failure and its soft fault detection. This approach has been tested on a simulation model of the ＂Sino-German Energy Conservation Demonstration Center＂ building heat pump air-conditioning system in Shenyang, China, and the results show that the Kalman filter and SPC fault detection method is simple and highly efficient with a low false alarm rate, and it can deal with the difficulties caused by the extreme environment and the non-linear influence of the parameters, and what＇s more, it provides a good foundation for dynamic fault diagnosis and fault prediction analysis.