Control of a Linear Distillation Column Using Type-2 Fuzzy Method Optimized by Genetic Algorithm

The distillation process is important process in the chemical industry and has wide application in industry. Distillation tower is used by chemical engineers as a popular tool to separate materials and is the most common method for separating materials. Keeping constant the product composition in the distillation column is very important from control perspective. Control of these complicated processes need intelligent methods to adopt the appropriate decision for control based on the behavior of the system. Between intelligent methods, fuzzy technique has superior response in complex systems control and so is used in this study. In this article at first, a type-1fuzzy controller is designed for linear model of distillation tower. In design of this Fuzzy controller, genetic algorithm (GA) is used for optimization of fuzzy rules base. It has been shown that the fuzzy controller is better than conventional PI one. Then the type-1 fuzzy controller has been replaced with type-2 fuzzy controller and has been shown that the performance of type-2 is better than type-1 in various points of view. In this study, the MATLAB/SIMULINK software has been used for modeling and implementing the proposed methods.