Economic plant wide control in debutanizer column

Abstract

Debutanizer is a distillation column used on LPG fractionation unit to separate butane and naphtha compound. Butane will be sold as LPG, while naphtha is used to add the octane rating in gasoline. The distillation column consumes large amounts of energy. Fifty percent of industrial energy need were used for cooling and heating of distillation column, caused production cost were high. Plant Wide Control (PWC) needs to integrate the control of process and optimization the costs of process or economic. Plant wide control is a method that can be used to determine good control strategy for debutanizer column. The purpose of plant wide control is to simplify connection between all the operated unit for safety requirement and increase output response. Prices of materials used include the energy prices. PWC managed to optimize the composition according to the specified values that are 0.4639 for the XD composition and 0.001 for the XB composition. When the flow rate of feed increase, the energy used is 3.5 GJ/h and able to save on operating costs of 0.37 USD/h, when the flow rate of feed is decrease, the energy used is 2.9 GJ/h and able to save on operating costs of 0.78 USD/h.