Teaching Classical and Advanced Control of Binary Distillation Column

This paper deals with education of graduate and undergraduate students in the field of classical and advanced controllers. A pilot scale binary distillation column is utilized to serve the teaching purposes. The emphasis of the paper is to practically teach identification, and widely used classical and advanced control schemes, such as Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and Model Predictive Control (MPC), over a plant. MATLAB/Simulink-based Human Machine Interface (HMI) is used by students to implement these control strategies. Performance results of both controllers subject to reference tracking, constraints and disturbance handling are presented. Developed directives and control schemes can be used for effective process control education of chemical/process engineers.