Plantwide control structure selection methodology for the benchmark vinyl acetate monomer plant

In this paper, the regulatory control structure selection (RCSS) methodology of Psaltis, Kookos, and Kravaris (2013, Computers & Chemical Engineering, 52, 240-248) is applied on the benchmark case study of the vinyl acetate (VAc) monomer plant. The VAc monomer plant consists of 10 unit operations with high level of interactions. The mathematical model of the process involves 246 state variables, 26 potential manipulated variables and 46 measurements. It is the first time that the proposed RCSS methodology is applied to a plantwide case study and this was made possible due to the improvements in the classical “back-off” methodology proposed by Psaltis et al. (2013). The control structure obtained for VAc plant is implemented on the nonlinear plant model using decentralized PI controllers and the simulation results illustrate its satisfactory performance.