Design and control of reactive dividing-wall column for the production of methyl acetate

• A reactive dividing-wall column is developed for methyl acetate production.
• Both design and control of the reactive dividing-wall column are investigated.
• Two control structures are presented and their performances are investigated.
• The RDWC can save 7.7% energy, 8.3% operating cost and 15.5% capital investment.
• The improved control structure for RDWC can handle disturbances effectively.

A reactive dividing-wall column (RDWC) is developed for the production of methyl acetate (MeAc) in this work. Both design and control of the RDWC are investigated by using commercial chemical simulator Aspen Plus and Aspen Dynamics. The optimum RDWC design in terms of total annual costs (TAC) is screened based on the proposed optimization procedure. The results show that about 7.7% savings in energy consumption, 8.3% reduction in operating cost and 15.5% decrease in capital investment can be achieved by the RDWC design compared to the corresponding two-column design. Two control structures (i.e., basic control structure and improved control structure) for the RDWC are presented. The results indicate that the improved control structure can handle disturbances in ±20% feed flow rate and −5 wt% feed composition effectively.