Computerschem.EngngVol.21, No. 8, pp.

783-786, 1997

Pergamon

Copyright 1997ElsevierScienceLtd
Printedin GreatBritain.Alltightsreserved
0098-1354/97$17.00+0.00

PH: S0098-1354(96)00316-X

Decentralized control of crude unit

distillation towers
R. Balachandran and M. Chidambaram*
Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras 600 036, India

(Received 27 April 1995; revised 7 August 1996)

Abstract

Decentralized PI controllers are designed by method of inequalities for a crude oil distillation tower containing
four interacting control loops. The performance of the present PI controllers are compared with that of the reported
PI controllers designed by BLT tuning method. The present PI controllers give lesser interaction among the loops.
1997 Elsevier Science Ltd
Introduction
Crude oil distillation towers are side stream distillation columns in which any upset will propagate to down
stream processing units and raise the total cost of the
refining (Hsie and McAvoy, 1991). Wade et al. (1977)
have developed a decoupling control scheme for side
stream product quality based on summation of side
stream flows. Muske et al. (1991) have applied multivariable model predictive controllers for control of crude
distillation columns. Product quality control is usually
applied to side streams of a crude tower. Each side draw
product must meet an end point (EP) specification which
in turn is controlled by manipulating its own flow (Hsie
and McAvoy, 1991). Product quality control is characterized by strong interaction among the control loops and
presence of significant time delay.
There are four side stream control loops namely that
of Naphtha flow, Kerosene flow, light gas flow and
heavy gas flow. Hsie and McAvoy (1991) have evaluated
the performances of decentralized PI controllers by BLT
method (Luyben, 1986) and that of detuned PI controllers as applied to the crude oil distillation towers.
Hsie and McAvoy (1991) have found that there is a still
significant interaction present by BLT PI controllers on
the original nonlinear model equations. They have
further detuned the PI controllers settings in order to
reduce the interaction among the four loops. Hsie and
McAvoy (1991) have also compared the performance of
the decentralized PI controllers with that of multivariable Quadratic Dynamic Matrix Control (QDMC).
They have found that the responses are better for QDMC
but the interactions are slightly higher. However, QDMC

*Author to whom correspondenceshould be addressed.

involves several tuning parameters. Since diagonal PI

controllers are easy to implement and the operator can
understand easily the operation of such diagonal controllers, method of designing such controllers with lesser
interaction among the loops is a desirable one. In the
present work, method of inequalities (Zakian and AINaib, 1973) is applied to design decentralized PI
controllers based on the transfer function matrix of a
crude tower. The response and the interactions are
compared with that of the PI controllers by BLT
method.

Transfer function model of the system

Hsie and McAvoy (1991) have reported 4 4 transfer
function model for a crude oil distillation column based
on the step response of a rigorous theoretical dynamic
model. Hsie and McAvoy (1991) have designed decentralized PI controllers by biggest log modulus tuning
(BLT) method (Luyben, 1986). In this method a
detuning factor FSLTis to be calculated. The controller
gains are reduced by this factor and the integral times are
increased by this factor. Luyben (1990) has given a
Fortran program listing for calculating the detuning
factor FBLT.
Using the method given by Luyben (1990), Hsie and
McAvoy (1991) have computed FBLr as 4.02. The
resulting PI controllers settings are given in Table I. The
BLT settings are substantially detuned from the ZieglerTable1. Controllerssettingsof the diagonalPl controllers
LoopNo
1
2
3
4

783

BLTmethod
Kc

~,

2.62
1.25
4.00
0.30

29.7
77.1
50.3
90.0

presentmethod
Kc
~,
0.26
1.36
3.38
0.35

16.23
ll.31
41.38
6.32

R. BALACHANDRANand M. CHIDAMBARAM

784

Nichols (Ziegler and Nichols, 1942) settings. The time

response of the transfer function model for a+ 10F step
change of the set point in the naphtha side stream and
interactions in the other three loops are shown in Fig. 1.
As reported by Hsie and McAvoy (1991), the responses
are stable but the interactions are significant for the BLT
method. Whereas the original Z - N settings make the
closed loop system unstable (Hsie and McAvoy, 1991).
The BLT method detunes the diagonal controllers
equally by the same detuning factor. Hsie and McAvoy
(1991) have further detuned the Z - N settings by
different factors for each individual control loop. This
detuning is done by trial and error on the original
nonlinear model equations. In the next section, we will
apply the method of inequalities for designing diagonal
PI controllers.

Design on decentralized PI controllers by method of

inequalities
Given the transfer function matrix based on an
operating point, conventional diagonal PI controllers
should be designed which will meet the performance
specifications. For this type of problems, a constrained

optimization method called method of inequalities is

suggested by Zakian and Al-Naib (I 973). This method is
essentially an optimization method. The design parameters and as well as physical constraints can be imposed
as constraints on the optimization problem. The constraints are specified as inequalities to be satisfied by the
system parameters, manipulated variables and outputs.
The control structure can also be specified as either a
decentralized or a centralized control system. Then the
design problem turns out to be finding an optimal
controller parameters set that satisfy all the inequality
constraints.
The constraints to be imposed should be of realistic
ones for the system in order to get a solution for the
optimization problem. The inequality constraints can be
specified in time domain or in frequency domain or in
both domains. Even though an optimization method is
required in this approach, the shift of emphasis for
minimization to satisfaction means that the speed of
convergence in the neighbourhood of a minimum
becomes much less important than the likelihood of
finding at least one feasible point at which all the
inequalities are satisfied. Since the method of inequali2.0

20.0

(c)

(a)
;

1.0

15.0

r\.

f'%

_ 10.0
I
e~
U~

I
D,,

5.0

0.0

r_\. ".

. ..-'..'=.=. . . . . .

-1.0

J
0.0
0

100.0

200.0

300.0

400.0

-2.o
0

500.0

100.0

200.0

300.0

400.0

500.0

time, rain

time, min
10.0

(b)

4.0

(d)

.)

5.0

o"2.0

,,_.,\ "--..............

t~

....................

N~ ....

-0.0

-5.0

-2,~
0

II

100.0

200.0

300.0

400.0

time, min

-lo.o
500,0

100.0

200.0

I,
300.0

I
400.0

500.0

t i m e , rain

Fig. 1. Closed loop response of the end points to a + 10F step change in Naphtha EP set point: ( ........ ) BLT settings; ( - - - - - - )
present settings.

785

Crude unit distillation towers

ties is given in detail by Zakian and AI-Naib (1973) and
Patel and Munro (1982), we shall discuss here only the
essential steps.
In this method the performance specifications such as
overshoot, settling time, rise time, lesser interaction
effects etc. are imposed as inequalities. Taiwo (1988)
and Prabhu and Chidambaram (1991) have discussed the
application of this method to the control of a binary
distillation column (2 2 system). In the present work,
this method is applied to the decentralized control of the
crude oil distillation towers (4 4 system). In general as
the size of the system increases, the interactions are
significant and hence there is a difficulty in designing
diagonal PI controllers.
Let y(t,p), r(t) and u(t,p) represent vectors of output,
reference and manipulated variables of the system. Let
G(s) and K(s,p) represent the transfer function matrices
of the process and controller, respectively. For a step
input in reference vector the closed loop transfer
function matrix becomes:

y(s,P) = {[I+ G(s)K(s,P)] - IG(s)K(s,P) } r(s)

(1)

where I is a unit matrix of size 4 4. Let us assume the

controller structure as

K(s,P)= diag [Kii(s,P)],for i= 1,2,3,4

where the PI controllers are denoted by

Ko(s,P)=P,,o+(P2,js)

(3)

The performance specification imposed in this work arc

(i) the peak overshoot of less than or equal to 25% (ii)
settling time less than or equal to If0 rains. For
interaction, which often aggravates the SISO approach
controllers performance on multivariable systems, a
limit of 50% is chosen. These specifications can be
expressed by the following inequalities,respectively.
max [y,(t,P)- y,(oo,p)]/y,(oo,p)_<0.25for i= 1,2,3,4

[y,(t,P) - Yii(c ,p)]lyi~( oo,P)-<0.10 for i= 1,2,3,4;t > ts

[yo(t,P)/y~(cc,P)]-<0.5 for i= 1,2,3,4; j = 1,2,3,4 and i # j
for t>t,. (4)
For the method of inequalities, the settings with a BLT
detuning factor FBLr=3.0 are used as initial guesses. In
the present work, a random search optimization method
of Luus and Jakola is used (Spaans and Luus, 1992) for
obtaining the values of the control parameters. This
method is easier to program and easy to use particularly
on Personal computers. The method is also found to give

(a)

10.0

(2)

(c)

10.0

5.0

6.0

I11
I:/

"7

Ill

,~.
/ \
/:',, \

i ',,

0.0

2.0

............

wV
-5.O

I00.0

200.0

300.0

400.0

-2.0

I
I00.0

500.0

I
200.0

I
I
300.0 400.0

time, rain

time, min

30.0

2.0

(d)

(b)

J-I:'f"..,..",

1.0

tL
o

0.0

li/\>

.q

500.0

20,0

.......

:==-

I0.0
I
l

-I.0
o.o

-2.0
|1

-3.0
0

I00.0

200.0

300.0

400.0

time, rain

500.0

-!o.o

I
I00.0

I
200.0

I
300.0

I
400.0

time, min

Fig. 2. Closed loop response of the end points to a + 10F step change in LGO-EP set point. Legend: as in Fig. 1.

500.0

786

R. BALACHANDRANand M. CH|DAMBARAM

the global optimum in several optimization problems

(Spaans and Luus, 1992; Luus, 1993). For the present
problem, the final values of the control parameters are
obtained as:
[0.258,16.266; 1.355,11.311 ;3.38 !,41.38;0.3534,6.32].
With these diagonal PI controllers, the closed loop
transient responses are evaluated on the transfer functions matrix model and the responses for a step change in
the set point of Naptha EP loop are shown in Fig. l(a--d).
The interactions are lesser when compared to that
obtained by BLT method. Similar responses are also
obtained for the step change in set point of low gas oil
EP loop as shown in Fig. 2(a--d).
Conclusions
The decentralized PI controllers designed by the
method of inequalities give lesser interactions among the
four control loops of a crude distillation tower. The
interactions are lesser than that of BLT method. Since
the desired specifications of the closed loop responses
and interactions can be easily incorporated in the method
of inequalities, it is easier to get the diagonal settings by
this method than by the BLT method.
References
Hsie L. and McAvoy T. J., Comparisons of single loop
and QDMC based control of crude oil distillation
towers, J. Proc. Contr. 1, 15-21 (1991).

Luus R., Optimization of heat exchanger networks, Ind.

Eng. Chem. Res. 32, 2633-2635 (1993).
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Proc. Des. Dev. 25, 654-660 (1986).
Luyben W. L., Process Modeling, Simulation and
Control for Chemical Engineers. II ed. McGraw
Hill, New York, pp. 599--603 (1990).
Maciejowwski J. W., Multivariable Feedback Design,
Addison Wesley, Reading, MA (1989).
Muske K., Young J., Grossididier P. and Tani S., Crude
unit product quality control, Comp and Chem.
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Patel R. V. and Munro N., Multivariable System Theory
and Design. Pergamon Press, New York, pp.
331-345 (1982).
Prabhu E. J. and Chidambaram M., Robust control of a
distillation column by the method of inequalities, J.
Proc. Contr. 1, 171-175 (1991).
Spaans R. and Luus R., Improvement of search-domain
reduction in random search optimization, J. Optim.
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Taiwo O., Application of the method of inequalities to
the multivariable control of distillation column,
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Zakian V. and Al-Naib U., Design of dynamical and
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lEE, 120, 1421-1427 (1973).
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