A Parametric Reactive Distillation Study: Economic Feasibility and Design Heuristics

The integration of reaction and distillation into a single column is called reactive distillation or catalytic distillation. Reactive distillation provides many benefits such as reduced capital and operating costs, circumventing non-reactive azeotropes, and overcoming equilibrium limited reactions. Industry has been successful in applying reactive distillation; however the integration of reaction and distillation is not applicable for all reaction/separation systems and it is not always clear when reactive distillation is a feasible design alternative. Heuristics or rules-of-thumb are an integral part of process systems engineering and are used to provide initial guidance and insight for the analysis of process feasibility and conceptual design. Heuristics are developed from experience, computer simulations, and process data and usually are simple rules that greatly reduce the effort required to determine initial process feasibility and design. Due to the complex interactions that occur when combining reaction with distillation, heuristics for reactive distillation have been slow to develop. In order to generate a set of heuristics for single column reactive distillation, a parametric study was conducted for ideal chemical reactive systems involving one or two reactants and one or two products. Each reactive system was divided into regions of similar component boiling point ordering which were expected to exhibit similar reactive distillation characteristics. The parametric study focused on the affects that changing relative volatility and chemical reaction equilibrium have on reactive distillation. Simulation results were used to develop a set of heuristics which outline the initial reactive distillation column design required to produce a desired product as well as the limits of economic feasibility. The generation of these heuristics was facilitated by a graphical representation which relates economic feasibility to reaction equilibrium constant, volatility ordering, relative volatility, and reflux ratio. The graphical representations are a useful screening tool which can be used to identify systems likely to benefit from single column reactive distillation. These heuristics were verified using real chemical reactive systems that are available in the reactive distillation literature

Method And System For Dynamic Stochastic Optimal Electric Power Flow Control

A dynamic stochastic optimal power flow (DSOPF) control system is described for performing multi-objective optimal control capability in complex electrical power systems. The DSOPF system and method replaces the traditional adaptive critic designs (ACDs) and secondary voltage control, and provides a coordinated AC power flow control solution to the smart grid operation in an environment with high short-term uncertainty and variability. The DSOPF system and method is used to provide nonlinear optimal control, where the control objective is explicitly formulated to incorporate power system economy, stability and security considerations. The system and method dynamically drives a power system to its optimal operating point by continuously adjusting the steady-state set points sent by a traditional optimal power flow algorithm.Clemson UniversityGeorgia Tech Research CorporationThe Curators Of The University Of Missour

Modelling and simulation framework for reactive transport of organic contaminants in bed-sediments using a pure java object - oriented paradigm

Numerical modelling and simulation of organic contaminant reactive transport in the environment is being increasingly relied upon for a wide range of tasks associated with risk-based decision-making, such as prediction of contaminant profiles, optimisation of remediation methods, and monitoring of changes resulting from an implemented remediation scheme. The lack of integration of multiple mechanistic models to a single modelling framework, however, has prevented the field of reactive transport modelling in bed-sediments from developing a cohesive understanding of contaminant fate and behaviour in the aquatic sediment environment. This paper will investigate the problems involved in the model integration process, discuss modelling and software development approaches, and present preliminary results from use of CORETRANS, a predictive modelling framework that simulates 1-dimensional organic contaminant reaction and transport in bed-sediments

Preliminary Design of Reactive Distillation Columns

A procedure that combines feasibility analysis, synthesis and design of reactive distillation columns is introduced. The main interest of this methodology lies on a progressive introduction of the process complexity. From minimal information concerning the physicochemical properties of the system, three steps lead to the design of the unit and the specification of its operating conditions. Most of the methodology exploits and enriches approaches found in the literature. Each step is described and our contribution is underlined. Its application is currently limited to equilibrium reactive systems where degree of freedom is equal to 2 or less than 2. This methodology which provides a reliable initialization point for the optimization of the process has been applied with success to different synthesis. The production of methyl-tert-butyl-ether (MTBE) and methyl acetate are presented as examples

Visualization animation for real-time reactive systems simulation

Simulation results form basis for the validation and verification of Real-Time Reactive systems design. The high complexity of such systems brings sophisticated simulation results that are difficult to understand. The way of presenting those results will have a great effect on the usability of the simulation tools. This thesis addresses the design and implementation of a visualization animation tool that will improve the usability of TROMLAB Framework, a rigorous real-time reactive systems development environment being built in the Department of Computer Science, Concordia University. The new tool uses graphical representation and animation to present the simulation results produced by TROMLAB tools. Also, The thesis introduces new guidelines for improving the understandability of real-time reactive simulation results. Furthermore, the thesis presents a solution for the Steam Boiler Controller case study, a benchmark problem for Real-Time Reactive studies, far the first time using TROMLAB formalism

Mage - Reactive articulatory feature control of HMM-based parametric speech synthesis

In this paper, we present the integration of articulatory control into MAGE, a framework for realtime and interactive (reactive) parametric speech synthesis using hidden Markov models (HMMs). MAGE is based on the speech synthesis engine from HTS and uses acoustic features (spectrum and f0) to model and synthesize speech. In this work, we replace the standard acoustic models with models combining acoustic and articulatory features, such as tongue, lips and jaw positions. We then use feature-space-switched articulatory-to-acoustic regression matrices to enable us to control the spectral acoustic features by manipulating the articulatory features. Combining this synthesis model with MAGE allows us to interactively and intuitively modify phones synthesized in real time, for example transforming one phone into another, by controlling the configuration of the articulators in a visual display. Index Terms: speech synthesis, reactive, articulators 1

Modelling Reactive Multimedia: Design and Authoring

Multimedia document authoring is a multifaceted activity, and authoring tools tend to concentrate on a restricted set of the activities involved in the creation of a multimedia artifact. In particular, a distinction may be drawn between the design and the implementation of a multimedia artifact. This paper presents a comparison of three different authoring paradigms, based on the common case study of a simple interactive animation. We present details of its implementation using the three different authoring tools, MCF, Fran and SMIL 2.0, and we discuss the conclusions that may be drawn from our comparison of the three approaches

Embedded Software Design for Mechatronic Systems

This research project is motivated by the fact that nowadays it is impossible to separate control engineering from software engineering. Besides that both of them can be found in definitions of mechatronics, this project deals with exploitation and improvement of their strong natural interdependency. In all modern reactive systems, what all mechatronics systems are, one will always find one or more embedded computers. The functionality of these computers, and in turn controlled systems, is powered by embedded software [1]

Rose-GRC translator : mapping UML visual models onto formal specifications

Real-time reactive systems are among the most difficult systems to design because of the complex functional and timing requirements that must be satisfied. Visual models serve to break the complexity barrier, allowing the developer to comprehend and reason with graphical representations. The graphical representations by themselves are not sufficient--they are informal and lack well-defined meaning. This thesis allows the description of classes, statechart diagrams, and collaboration diagrams of reactive system components to be constructed graphically using UML notation in the Rose environment, and maps them to a formal notation, which can be subjected to a rigorous analysis, such as validation and verification, prior to committing to an implementation. The mapping is implemented by a translator using RoseScript, the language provided with the Rose Extensibility Interface of Rational Rose