Control structure design of an industrial crude terephthalic acid hydropurification process with catalyst deactivation

• Dynamic modeling for CTA hydropurification process with catalyst deactivation.
• This dynamic model is accurate compared with industrial data.
• IFSH method is applied to build the complete plant control structure.
• Proposed control system can make a higher profit for the process.

Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) is a fundamental raw material for polyester and textile industry. The p-xylene oxidation process and crude terephthalic acid (CTA) hydropurification process are the two main sections of industrial PTA production. 4-Carboxybenzaldehyde is a byproduct of the first section that can lower the polymerization rate and the average molecular weight of the polymer. In this work, an improved complete plant dynamic model of the second section, CTA hydropurification with catalyst deactivation, was developed based on Aspen Dynamics. The present contribution considered the performance of the proposed catalyst deactivation model ( Azarpour and Zahedi, 2012). Moreover, we designed a control structure for this process with catalyst deactivation, and the performance of the resulting control structure was analyzed using several criteria. Results showed that the proposed system provides a better control system and higher profit for the process.