Design and control integration of a reactive distillation column for ethyl lactate production

In this work, the design-control integration problem is addressed for designing a reactive distillation column for ethyl lactate production The methodology for integrated design proposed by Ochoa (2005) is used as a base for process the equipment design, taking the practical controllability concept as the linking feature between the design and control topics. Practical controllability metrics are included as constraints of the design optimization problem. The equipment designed using the methodology proposed here is economically optimal and controllable in the practical controllability sense. A comparison against the results obtained when process design is carried out without considering controllability has shown the advantages of the methodology applied.