Temperature Control in the Ethanol-Water Distillation Process

Abstract

The objective of this work is to determine the control structure that avoids the concentration drop due to the nonlinear effect of the binary azeotrope present in the distillation process of the azeotropic ethanol-water mixture, for this purpose a Smith predictive control structure is applied, which is compared with the behavior of a system with delay and an integral proportional control. This applied to a previously characterized experimental plant, for the simulation, the analysis of the step response of each of the proposed systems is performed, confirming that the predictor eliminates the overshoot in the behavior of the system during the distillation while the implemented PI control maintains them even when the response speed of it is lower.