Diseño e implantación de la automatización de una columna de rectificación de platos del Laboratorio de Operaciones Unitarias de la Facultad de Ingeniería Química y Agroindustria

Abstract

The present work reports the design and implementation of an automatic control system for a rectification column of dishes. The objective was to facilitate the engagement of chemistry students in practice work related to atmospheric distillation. A Siemens PLC device was used to control the temperature of the boiler, the reflux, condensation, distillation feed processes, and for monitoring the pressure in the steam line, the boiler and temperatures in the column. LABVIEW was used to design a graphical interface to view and monitor the plant and its processes. For controlling process variables like temperature, pressure and fluid levels it was designed and implemented a Human Machine Interface (HMI) using a Simatic touch panel. The status of the column of dishes, the setting and monitoring of different variables of the distilling process, as well as operations of the valves can be executed in real time, through the HMI. To control temperature in the boiler and monitoring of temperatures in the plate column thermocouples type K were used. A level sensor in the feed vessel was designed exploiting the conductivity properties of the binary mixture.