Industrial experiment on Gasoline Stripping Process Control

Abstract

This paper presents an industrial experiment in advanced process control applied to gasoline stripping process from a catalytic reforming unit. After reviewing some technological aspects of the process, a critic analysis of the existent control structure is made. The conclusions are used to elaborate the new process control structure. The paper presents aspects concerning both hardware and software components. The computer-aided control of temperature both in the top and bottom section of the distillation column has been accomplished with a special IMC algorithm, which includes Smith predictor, too. This algorithm implicitly includes the three major effects of classic PID algorithm: the proportional effect, the integral effect, and the anticipation effect. The main features of the proposed control algorithm are: good performances, robustness according to model parameters uncertainties, easy offline and online tuning. The proposed control system was industrially tested and validated by practical results.