A reactive dividing wall column (RDWC)
integrates reactive distillation
and multiproduct separation together, leading to the realization of
process intensification. However, the reluctance to use it is due
to the uncontrollable vapor split, which is self-regulated according
to the flow resistance on each side of the partition wall. For some
cases, the pressure of reaction and multicomponent separation is different,
which results in an energy penalty if we directly integrate these
units together, for example, formic acid (FA) production through methyl
formate (MF) as presented in the part I of this series (Ind.
Eng. Chem. Res. 2020, 59, 22215).
To tackle these obstacles, a new reactive dividing wall column without
the uncontrollable vapor split (NV-RDWC) by converting the bidirectional
vapor–liquid thermal coupling to liquid-only transfer stream
is proposed in this work. Optimization was first carried out by coupling
the genetic algorithm (GA) and rigorous simulation. On the basis of
the optimal solution, a detailed comparison was conducted between
the conventional reactive distillation process, RDWC, and NV-RDWC,
and the results show the superiority of NV-RDWC. Then two multiloop
proportional-integral (PI) control structures and a model predictive
control (MPC) for NV-RDWC were developed, respectively, to investigate
their control performance. The dynamic response in the face of feed
disturbance shows that MPC could give superior control performance
for this complex coupled process.