Thermodynamic Diagram Based Estimation Structure Design for Ternary Distillation Column

In this work the ternary distillation column estimation problem is addressed, using an ethanol-tertbutanol-water pilot experimental column. The estimation problem is more difficult and less studied that the one of the binary case. The combination of a thermodynamic framework with results drawn in a previous structure-oriented geometric estimation study yields a procedure with criteria with physical meaning to jointly design the estimation structure and algorithm. The approach is illustrated and tested with an adjustable-structure geometric estimator implementation.