Control and Optimization of a Three Phase Industrial Hydrogenation Reactor

Author(s)

Rezende, Mylene Cristina ; Costa, Aline Carvalho ; Maciel Filho, Rubens

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL REACTOR ENGINEERING; v. 2, p. 25-pg., 2004-01-01.

Abstract

Three phase catalytic reactors are very important industrial reactors with complex steady state and dynamic behavior. In fact, the interaction among the gas, solid and liquid phases with the kinetic, mass and heat transfer mechanisms lead the system to have a challenging behavior. That is the case for the o-cresol hydrogenation to obtain 2-methyl-cyclohexanol, which is carried out in a three phase catalyst slurry reactor. A determinist mathematical model was developed using the mass and energy conservation equations for each phase, so that a system of differential equations is generated. In order to identify some suitable control structures an extensive dynamic behavior analysis was carried out. The controller implemented was a multivariable predictive controller based on the philosophy of Dynamic Matrix Control (DMC). The problem of optimization was solved through non-linear programming making use of the Successive Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm. (AU)