Part B

i) Liquid level at the bottom of the absorber.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Feedback Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To maintain the liquid level at the bottom of the absorber.
Manipulated Variable: The outlet glycol flow rate.
Disturbance Variable: The inlet glycol flow rate.

WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- The liquid level is controlled by controlling the outlet flow of absorber.

- Under normal condition, the output signal of level controller manipulates the control
valve.
- As soon as level drop, the level controller will control the valve by reducing the output
value.
- When output of valve reduced, the outlet flow reduces and level in the tank could be
maintained.

ADVANTAGES:

- Feedback control is a trial and error operation until the manipulated variable reach and
remain at the set point (Nawari, 1994).
- Furthermore, it has an ability to reduce a system sensitivity to external disturbances
that can gives the system a more robust control as any changes in the feedback signal
will result in compensation by the controller (Vegte, 1986).

ii) The water reflux into the stripper.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Ratio Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To obtain the actual ratio of water reflux flowing through the system.
Manipulated Variable: The inlet water flowrate.
Disturbance Variable: The inlet glycol flowrate.
WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- In this design, it uses divider concept of ratio to obtain the actual ratio of water reflux
flowing through the system.
- In ratio control system, both inlet water flow rate and inlet glycol flow rate are to be
measured.
- The ratio control will divide both flowrate to obtain the actual ratio flowing through the
system.
R= FB/FA whereby,

FA= water flowrate

FB= glycol flowrate

- The obtained value calculated would be sent to the controller which manipulated the
flow of water flowrate in order to maintain the set point.
- Hence, it can be concluded that the set point of this controller system is the required
ratio.

ADVANTAGES:

- Ratio control system maintain the relationship between two variables to provide
regulation of a third variable.
- Ratio system are used primarily for blending ingredients into a product or as feed
control to chemical reactor (Kumar, 2007).
- Ratio system portrayed an elementary form of feedforward control.
- The control variable which is flow ratio can be kept constant and can be directly
recorded to verify control performance.
- The purpose of this control system is to make sure that this is done at minimum cost
of operation.
- In this case, the ratio is important to control the reflux of water, hence, maintaining a
steady operation to reduce the disturbances which is inlet flow of glycol from the
absorber (Jaynathan, 2013).

iii) The pressure in the stripper.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Feedforward Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To measure the pressure in the stripper.

Manipulated Variable: The inlet steam flowrate of reboiler.
Disturbance Variable: The inlet steam temperature.

WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- Pressure is controlled by controlling the inlet steam flowrate of reboiler.

- Under normal condition, the output signal of pressure controller manipulate the control
valve.
- As soon as pressure drop, the pressure controller will control the valve by increasing
the output of controller.
- When output of controller increased, the input flow increased and pressure in the tank
could be maintained.

ADVANTAGES:

- The advantages of this control system are that the corrective action is independent of
sources of disturbances.
- Besides, no knowledge of process model is required.
- Basically, this control system can increase the performance of the system by making
corrective action by remove major disturbances.
- In terms of cost, feedforward is the cheapest option compared to the other control
system as it just uses simpler control system.
- The cost for maintenance and installation are also slightly lower compared with the
others (William, 2009).

iv) The pressure in the top third of the stripper.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Feedback Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To measure the pressure in the top third in the stripper.
Manipulated Variable: The outlet water vapour flowrate of stripper.
Disturbance Variable:

WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- Pressure is controlled by controlling the outlet water vapour flowrate of stripper.

- Under normal condition, the output signal of level controller manipulate the control
valve.
 - As soon as pressure drop, the pressure controller will control the valve by reducing the
output.
- When output of valve reduced, the outlet flow of water vapour reduced and pressure
in the tank could be maintained.

ADVANTAGES:

- Feedback control is a trial and error operation until the manipulated variable reach and
remain at the set point (Nawari, 1994).
- Furthermore, it has an ability to reduce a system sensitivity to external disturbances
that can gives the system a more robust control as any changes in the feedback signal
will result in compensation by the controller (Vegte, 1986).

v) The liquid level at the bottom of the stripper.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Feedforward Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To maintain the liquid level in the bottom of the stripper.
Manipulated Variable: The inlet water flowrate.
Disturbance Variable: The glycol outlet flowrate.

WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- The liquid level is controlled by controlling the inlet water flowrate.

- Under normal condition, the output signal of level controller will manipulate the control
valve.
- As soon as the level drop, the level controller will control the valve by increasing the
output value from controller.
- When the output from controller increased, the inlet flow increased and level in the
stripper can be maintained.

ADVANTAGES:

- The advantages of this control system are that the corrective action is independent of
sources of disturbances.
- Besides, no knowledge of process model is required.
- Basically, this control system can increase the performance of the system by making
corrective action by remove major disturbances.
 - In terms of cost, feedforward is the cheapest option compared to the other control
system as it just uses simpler control system.
- The cost for maintenance and installation are also slightly lower compared with the
others (William, 2009).

vi) Efficient absorber operation at various throughputs.

PROPOSED CONTROL SYSTEM: Ratio Control System

VARIABLES:

Controlled Variable: To measure the efficient of absorber at various throughputs.

Manipulated Variable: The inlet glycol flowrate.
Disturbance Variable: The dry gas out flowrate.

WORKING PRINCIPLES:

- In order to measure the efficient absorber operation at various throughputs, the ratio
of inlet glycol flowrate and the inlet wet gas flowrate must be known.
- Multiplier ratio control system are used since the inlet stream glycol flowrate varies
when the inlet stream wet gas flowrate varies.
- Firstly, the transmitter would measure the inlet stream wet gas flowrate.
- Then, the value would be multiplied with the desired ratio to obtain the required flow
rate in glycol inlet flowrate (set point to the flow controller of glycol inlet flowrate)

FBset = R x FA whereby,

FA = inlet wet gas in

FB = glycol inlet flowrate

- Stream of wet gas inlet is wild flow which is manipulated to control something else,
such as flowrate.

ADVANTAGES:

- Ratio control system maintain the relationship between two variables to provide
regulation of a third variable.
- Ratio system are used primarily for blending ingredients into a product or as feed
control to chemical reactor.
 - Ratio system portrayed an elementary form of feedforward control.
- The control variable which is flow ratio can be kept constant and can be directly
recorded to verify control performance.
- The purpose of this control system is to make sure that this is done at minimum cost
of operation (Jaynathan, 2013).

REFERENCES
Jaynathan, E.W (2013). Automated Continuous Process Control, 142-173. doi:
10.1002/0471218839.ch7

Kumar, A. A. (2007). Control system. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India.

Nawari, M. (1994). Robust H/feedback control system. Proceedings of 1994 33rd IEEE
Conference on Decision and Control. doi:10.1109/cdc.1994.411490

Vegte, J. V. (1986). Feedback control system. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

William.K.A (2009). Process Automation Handbook, 179-182. doi:10.1007/978-1-84628-282-

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