Controllability analysis of thermodynamically equivalent thermally coupled arrangements for quaternary distillations

In this paper, a detail dynamic analysis of the thermodynamically equivalent structures for four-component mixtures is presented. The simulation results for the various cases of study have shown that the thermodynamically equivalent structures have different dynamic closed-loop responses in contrast to the corresponding original thermally coupled configurations. It has been observed that the dynamic responses depend on the thermodynamically equivalents structures and their corresponding counterparts of the original thermally coupled configurations. Therefore, for a thermally coupled configuration with substantial energy savings, it is significant to compare the dynamic responses of the thermodynamically equivalent structures to find the optimal solution in terms of both energy consumption and closed-loop dynamic performance.