Optimal Tuning of MTBE Reactive Distillation Tower Controllers Using NSGA-II

Control of reactive distillation (RD) column is a challenging task due to its high degree of non-linearity, strong interactions, steady state multiplicity, time delay, process uncertainties, and the large number of possible control configurations. On the other hand, important products such as methyl tertiary butyl ether and ether tertiary butyl are produced via this method. An optimal control of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) column is studied in this paper utilizing the Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm concept in conjunction of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller. The novelty of the work is in the optimal tuning of PID controllers by minimizing of two objective functions (Overshoot and Integral of Absolute Error (IAE)) through Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II). Numerical results show that NSGA-II based tuning method has excellent ability in optimal control of MTBE RD column.