Glycerin Purification Process Plant System Design and Performance

Abstract

Pure glycerin is normally adopted for the production of cosmetics, personal care and food industryin order to produce quality end-products. Most crude glycerin, however, contains a sticky substance and coloring materials that may affect the flavor and color of the end-product. This paper presents the design and development of the glycerin purification process plant system to purify the crude glycerin through heating process. The process system is designed and developed based on the information gathered from literature. The system architecture of the process plant is developed using industrial instrumentations and hardware system found in the laboratory. The choice of transducer and final control element used is based on the needs of the developed system. Glycerin purification is a process of removing the peroxides and the secondary products found in the crude in which the process is significantly depends on the operating temperature. In this work, the temperature control system for glycerin heating process is designed and the process controllability in terms of settling time and percent overshoot is experimented using PID controller. The results of the experiments show that the developed glycerin purification process plant system is workable and able to provide good temperature control system performance for glycerin heating process. PID controller with correct controller parameters adjustment can improve the glycerin heating process system performance. The main contribution of this paper is the development of the glycerin purification process plant system in which the system implemented is different from any of the related publications in the aspects of instrumentation and hardware system used.