MODELING AND CONTROL OF BINARY DISTILLATION COLUMN USING LabVIEW

Abstract

Distillation is a continuous process in the petroleum and the chemical industries. A high amount of energy used in the chemical and petrochemical industries is consumed in the distillation process, since large amount of heat transfer takes place between the trays of distillation column. Thus, there is a need of energy efficient process to be designed and controlled, in order to make the final and the intermediate products of the distillation process of desired quality and the whole process being more economic. In the present study, graphical programming of LabVIEW software has been utilized to develop model for distillation column and also to control the product stream composition. Use of virtual instrumentation for the modeling of systems and controlling the process variables improves the performance and reliability of the whole plant. Virtual instrumentation saves the extra cost, time and energy that are incurred while setting up traditional instrumentation systems. It is a latest form of modern measurement/monitoring technology where all types of measurements are done on front panels created on PC screen. This work explores the very capability of Virtual instrumentation to monitor and control the process variables, which is composition of the product stream of the distillation process, and the use of LabVIEW in the field of Process control.