Plant wide Control of Hydrodealkylation Process using Aspen Engineering Suite

T. Jithender Reddy a, Prabirkumar Saha b *

Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, North Guwahati, Assam-781039.Email;thummala@iitg.ac.in b Department o Chemical Engineering ,Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, North Guwahati, Assam- 781039. Email;p.saha@iitg.ernet.in (corresponding author)

ABSTRACT
Dynamic Matrix Control [1] is widely used in chemical and petrochemical industries for improving plant efficiency and reducing off-spec product. Because of its simplistic step-response based controller development approach, DMC technique is largely useful for plant wide control. In this work, a comparative study on the performance of a 2 2 Dynamic Matrix Controller (DMC) and a 2 2 Quadratic Dynamic Matrix Controller (QDMC) is carried out on a Hydrodealkylation (HDA) Plant. The production rate and purity of benzene are the control objectives while compressor power and reflux ratio are chosen as the manipulated variables. In QDMC, the constraints are applied on the future control moves and the cost function is minimized by quadratic programming. Both DMC and QDMC showed good control performance in terms of disturbance rejection. The entire simulation has been done using the commercial dynamic simulator (ASPEN Engineering Suite).

Keywords: Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC), Quadratic DMC, Hydrodealkylation Process, Aspen
Engineering suite.

INTRODUCTION
In the past, unit-based control system design methodology [2] has been widely used to design control systems for complete plants. However, the recent stringent environmental regulations, safety concerns, and economic considerations demand the control engineers to make the chemical processes highly integrated with material and energy recycles. Several researchers [3] studied the effect of these recycles on the overall dynamics and concluded that recycles need special attention while designing plant wide control systems as they change the dynamics of the plant in a way which may not always be apparent from the dynamics of the individual unit operations. Hence, the unit-based methodology seems to be scarcely equipped to design the control system for such complex plants. The HDA-plant, a chemical plant for production of benzene, has been of long standing interest to chemical process engineers [4-5] and control engineers [6]. Since this non-linear, large scale process is highly integrated and non-minimum phase, it forms an important test bed for plant wide control approaches because of many interconnected units and recycled streams. In the HDA-plant, benzene is produced via hydrodealkylation of toluene. The process comprises an exothermic reaction and an equilibrium reaction. There are two input substances, toluene and hydrogen and three product substances, benzene, diphenyl and methane. In principle, model predictive control (MPC) can be applied to very large plant-wide control problems. The multivariable and constraint-handling capabilities of MPC are very appealing compared to decentralized control. Linear model predictive control (LMPC) has been applied successfully to industrial processes with hundreds of input and output variables [7]. Model predictive controllers (MPCs) have indicated good performances from theoretical point of view as well as practical applications during past two decades [8]. Due to their ability in explicitly handling of the constraints and easily extending to MIMO systems containing delays and inverse responses, this family of controllers has attracted good attention from large industrial manufacturers [8]. Engineers at Shell Oil Company developed their own independent MPC technology in the early 1970s, with an initial application in 1973. Cutler and Ramaker presented details of an unconstrained multivariable control algorithm which they named Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC) at the 1979 National AIChE meeting [1] and at the 1980 Joint Automatic Control Conference [9].

The original IDCOM and DMC algorithms provided excellent control of unconstrained multivariable processes. Constraint handling, however, was still somewhat ad hoc. Engineers at Shell Oil addressed this weakness by posing the DMC algorithm as a quadratic program (QP) in which input and output constraints appear explicitly. Cutler et al. first described the QDMC algorithm in a 1983 AIChE conference paper [10]. Garcia and Morshedi [11] published a more comprehensive description several years later. Although the QDMC algorithm is a somewhat advanced control algorithm, the QP itself is one of the simplest possible optimization problems that one could pose. The Hessian of the QP is positive definite for linear plants and so the resulting optimization problem is convex. This means that a solution can be found readily using standard commercial optimization codes. The QDMC algorithm can be regarded as representing a second generation of MPC technology, comprised of algorithms which provide a systematic way to implement input and output constraints. This was accomplished by posing the MPC problem as a QP, with the solution provided by standard QP codes. In this work, an effort has been made to implement DMC based plant wide control on HDA process. A comparative study between unconstrained (DMC) and constrained (QDMC) control performance has been done using Aspen Engineering Suite.

MATHEMATICAL MODELING
The linear step response model used by the DMC algorithm relates changes in a process output to a weighted sum of past input changes, referred to as input moves. For the SISO case the step response model has the following form:

yk+

N 1 i =1

si u k+

ji

+ sN uk+

j N

The move weights s i are the step response coefficients. Mathematically the step response can be defined as the integral of the impulse response; given one model form the other can be easily obtained. Multiple outputs were handled by superposition. By using the step response model one can write predicted future output changes as a linear combination of future input moves. The matrix that ties the two together is the so-called Dynamic Matrix. As was noted earlier, DMC extends straightforwardly for application on multivariable systems. The basic form of DMC equation remains the same, except that matrices and vectors become larger and appropriately partitioned. We illustrate with an example of a two-input, two-output system. The DMC equations are given by

e1 B11 2 = e B21
i

B12 u 1 B22 u 2
i

Where e is the error prediction vector for output variable i (i = 1,2), u

is the sequence of control

moves for input variable i (i = 1, 2),and Bi j is the dynamic matrix formed from the step response of output variable i to input variable j (i = 1, 2; j = 1, 2).The above equation is in the form of and therefore, the least-squares control move sequences are also given by

B u = e ;

u = ( B T B) 1 B T e
Provided that by this notation we mean

e1 u 1 e = 2 u = 2 e u

B B = 11 B21

B12 B22

With multivariable chemical engineering systems, it often happens that a unit change in one output variable is much more important than a unit change in another. A typical example is the distillation unit

in which sometimes top product quality (measured in mole fractions) is one output to be controlled and a tray temperature in the bottom section of the column(measured in OF) is another. In the case of the first variable a unit change represents its entire scale (mole fractions must be between 0 and 1) while temperature changes of 10OFare not considered unusual. Thus, a unit change in temperature may be deemed as important as a 0.01 change in mole fraction. DMC recognizes the importance of scaling such that equally important changes in various output variables are treated equally. This is done through theratio matrix, W, which represents the importance we wish to attach to a unit change in each variable relative to a unit change in the others. Upon introduction of W, the DMC least squares problem is scaled to become that of finding u to minimize

J = (e BWu )T (e BWu ) J = 0 ; Then yields the solution u u = ( W T B T BW ) 1 W T B T e

The objective of a DMC controller is to drive the output as close to the set point as possible in a least squares sense. An extended method for solution of DMC problems is QDMC (quadratic dynamic matrix control)[12] which accounts for the input constraints. Optimal inputs are computed as follows: When constraints are involved the problem formulation must be augmented with the constraint equations. If we define collective vector of all control moves as, i.e. u :

u = [u (k ), u (k + 1),...., u (k + m 1)]T
The optimization problem can be written as the following standard quadratic program[13]

min (u ) = 1 u T Qu + q T u subject to T u ,where the matrices Q, , are related to the 2 tuning parameters and some hard constraints, the vectors u , are linear functions of output prediction vector, the past inputs , u ( k 1), u ( k 2),..., u ( k n) ,as well as being functions of tuning
parameters. On solving the above objective function, the optimum inputs obtained are

u = (W T B T BW + H ) 1W T B T e , H represents the weighting matrix.

DMC and QDMC take full advantage of the computational power of computers. Constraint handling is an important factor [14] which was previously unavailable with PID type control systems. These methods need only open-loop step or impulse responses for design and no assumptions need be made about the order of the system [15].

HYDRODEALKYLATION PROCESS
The HDA model has been taken from elsewhere [16]. In the HDA process, fresh toluene (pure) and hydrogen (95% hydrogen and 5% methane) are mixed with recycled toluene and hydrogen This reactant mixture is preheated in a feed-effluent heat exchanger (FEHE) using the reactor effluent stream and then to the reaction temperature in a furnace before being fed to the adiabatic PFR. Two main reactions taking place inside this reactor are tolulene+H2 benzene +methane 2benzene diphenyl+H2 The reactor effluent is quenched with a portion of the recycle separator liquid to prevent coking, and further cooled in the FEHE and cooler before being fed to the vapor-liquid separator. A portion of unconverted hydrogen and methane overhead vapor from the separator is purged. While the remainder is compressed and recycled to the reactor. The liquid from the separator is processed in the separation section consisting of three distillation columns. The stabilizer column removes hydrogen and methane as the overhead product, and benzene is the desired product from the benzene column top. Finally, in the recycle column, toluene is separated from diphenyl, as the distillate, and recycled back.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The Control Design Interface (CDI) feature of Aspen Engineering Suite is used to generate state space matrices of the HDA process. It has been found that the process has 7 positive poles. It necessarily means that the system is open-loop unstable in nature. It has also been observed that the system has seven level variables (viz. separator level, two benzene column levels, two toluene column levels ,two stabilizer column levels). All these unstable poles are removed by simple PID feedback stabilizing controller for further control study. Two most important control objectives for HDA process are benzene production rate and its purity. Two suitable manipulated variables are necessary to complete the control structure. An RGA analysis has been also been done using the CDI interface. The RGA matrix is the following: Table no.1 Relative Gain Array Matrix Production rate Product purity Compressor power 1.0796 -0.0796 Reflux ratio -0.0796 1.0796 It has been concluded production rate should be paired with compressor power whereas purity should be paired with reflux ratio. Step response data has been generated by employing 20% step change in the manipulated inputs viz. compressor power and reflux ratio. From the generated step response data we have taken 33 predicted horizon points for formulating the dynamic matrix. Using the dynamic matrix that formed from step response data least square objective function was formulated to find out future control moves for unconstrained DMC. The least square problem was also formulated as standard quadratic program by posing constraints on control moves in QDMC. Controller performance was checked by employing 20% disturbance in preflash cooler duty. Following figures shows the performance of both DMC and QDMC for the above mentioned disturbance. By figures 1 and 3, it can be concluded that DMC performance is better compare to QDMC in view of tracking the desired set point. Fig 2 and Fig 4 shows the variation in the manipulated inputs while tracking setpoint trajectory. In reality the disturbance in the Preflash cooler duty may be arises because of malfunctioning of the cooler. In such a case desired controlled variable can be kept at setpoint by employing DMC. It can be seen from the graphs that DMC had faster response time compared to QDMC.Morever while controlling the production rate QDMC showed overshoot and fluctuations compared to DMC.

CONCLUSIONS
Control of product purity and production rate were accomplished using DMC and quadratic dynamic matrix control (QDMC). The performance of these controllers was tested for a disturbance of 20% changes in preflash cooler duty. In comparison to QDMC, DMC showed faster response time in reaching the desired control limit and actual setpoint for controlling Product purity. For production rate control, DMC had lower overshoot and faster response time toward the desired control limits compared to QDMC.In general, a comparison between the DMC strategy with QDMC control strategy showed greatly improved controller performance with DMC.

1.01 p uct purity (lbm l/lb ol) rod o m 1 0.99 0.98 0.97 0.96 0.95 0.94 0.93 0 5 10 15 20 25 Time (hrs) DMC SETPOINT QDMC

Fig.1.Comparison of performance of DMC and QDMC in tracking product purity

3.15 3.1 Reflux ratio 3.05 3 2.95 2.9 2.85 0 5 10 15 20 25 Time(hrs) DMC QDMC

Fig.2.Variation in the Reflux ratio

269.2 p d ctio ra (lb o r) ro u n te m l/h 269.18 269.16 269.14 269.12 269.1 269.08 269.06 269.04 269.02 269 0 5 10 15 20 25 Time (hrs) DMC SETPOINT QDMC

Fig.3. Comparison of performance of DMC and QDMC in tracking production rate

640 630 620 Break pow (hp) er 610 600 590 580 570 560 550 540 0 5 10 15 20 25 Time(hrs) QDMC" DMC

Fig.4.Variation in Compressor power

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