1.1.

Transesterification Reactor
As shown in Figure 7 the transesterification reactor is controlled by a cascade control
scheme. The reactor temperature is controlled by a heating jacket/heating coil. The reactor
temperature may will be influenced by variations of disturbances in the feed temperature or
flow rate. A cascade control is employed, the temperature of product is measured and a
signal is sent to the heating control valve, this increases or decreases and maintaining the
heat-transfer to the reactor at a constant. The cascade control will adjust the setting of the
heating control valve if an error in the reactor temperature occurs. The cascade control
consists of two controllers, the reactor temperature controller which measures the reactor
temperature, compares it to the set point and computes the resulting heating flow output.
The second controller compares the set point to the heating flow temperature and adjusts
the flow accordingly. The primary valve is controlled by a proportional-plus-integral controller
whereas the secondary valve is controlled by a proportional controller (Perry et al. 1997). A
pressure controller will be utilised to control the pressure in the vessel which measures and
adjust the flow of the feed accordingly.

1.2. Glycerol Distillation Column

L-V Configuration
For a two-product distillation column, there exists five degrees of freedom, theses degrees
correspond to control of the following: distillate removal rate, bottoms removal rate, reboiler
duty, reflux rate and the condenser duty. The pressure of the column, the liquid level of the
reboiler and the reflux accumulator level should all be stabilised in order for the column to
reach steady state, this leaves two degrees of freedom for the control of the process
objectives. After the level loops of the distillation column are closed by using the distillate
flow (D) for the control of the condenser level, and the bottoms flow (B) rate for the control of
the reboiler level, the reflux (L) and boil-up (V) remains as degrees of freedom, giving rise to
the name of the control scheme employed in the distillation column i.e. the LV configuration
as seen in Figure 8. Added to the control of the distillation column is a feedforward controller
(L/F) and a temperature control using (V) the boil-up flow (Skogestad 2007).

For the level control a PI-controller with large integral time is used in a feed-forward
configuration. The temperature control is executed by a fast feed-back loop since it takes a
short time for a disturbance to cause significant composition changes in the column ends.
The pressure controller (PC) is of the feed-forward kind and manipulates the flow of the
cooling water in the condenser increased in order to maintain a higher temperature of the
stream recycled back into the column (Skogestad 1990). The boil-up (V) is used to control
the temperature in the bottoms section, and the temperature sensor is situated at the bottom
as this is where the important product is situated (Sneesby et al. 1999). (it is recommended
that the temp sensor is moved to the top if accurate control of the top product is more
important than the bottom product vir jou column)

Reactor Temp Set Point (master)

Water Surge Tank

Reactor Temp Set Point (Slave)

Heating Water out

Heating Water in