An Original Approach for the Dynamic Simulation of a Crude Oil Distillation Plant I. Building-up a full-scale mathematical model

A crude oil plant consists of a main column with several sidestripers and pumparounds. While steady state modeling and simulation is fairly standard today, using well-known software tools as HYSYS platform (ASPEN) and PRO/II environment (Simulation Sciences Inc.), only little is known about the dynamic simulation of crude oil plants intimacy in the open literature. Due to the process complexity, the references in this field mention many difficulties in building-up a dynamic model for this multi-component distillation (as first step in the dynamic simulator implementation), model that could be appropriate for numerical integration [1,2]. The presented model is based on pseudo-components and makes use of the well-known MESH equations, in an original approach following topological and functional rules. Additional simplifications result in a robust dynamic model with reasonable accuracy, without affecting the “full-scale ” model feature. This first part of the work presents the detailed mathematical model, explicitly oriented to numerical integration within an appropriate simulation environment