Development of a software sensor for compositions in continuous reactive distillation

Abstract

A model based soft sensor is presented for composition estimation in continuous multicomponent reactive distillation. Composition soft sensor is supported by a simplified dynamic model of the process that includes component balance equations together with thermodynamic relations and reaction kinetics. Temperature measurements used as inputs to the soft sensor are suitably selected in order to obtain optimal estimates for compositions. Design and performance of the composition soft sensor is evaluated by applying to a metathesis reactive distillation column. Results demonstrate effectiveness of the soft sensor for inferential estimation of compositions in reactive distillation column.