Design and Control of Acrolein Production Process

Abstract

In this study, the design and control of acrolein production plant has been investigated. The proposed design consists of a reactor and two distillation columns. Propylene reacts with oxygen and produces acrolein, acrylic acid, carbon dioxide and water. Plant wide operability and control of the entire acrolein production plant with decentralized controllers are explained. Tray temperature control loop and composition control loop are designed to infer final product purity. From the results of dynamic simulation, the proposed control strategy performs very well in rejecting various disturbances while maintaining the acrolein product purity with a settling time of less than 4 hours. The settling times of tops and bottoms of the distillation column, pressure controller is reported as 3.11 hours and 1.32 hours, respectively.