Dynamic analysis of an oil-refinery unit under normal operating conditions

This paper describes a series of experiments, carried out at the Belfast refinery of the British Petroleum Company Limited, in which a pseudorandom binary signal has been used to perturb three inputs to the distillate-splitter column. Responses to the perturbations have been measured, and the data used to compute offline crosscorrelation functions and z transfer functions; these results are discussed in detail. Step-response measurements are also described, and the results compared with the impulse responses obtained by crosscorrelation. Conclusions regarding the application of pseudorandom binary signals to industrial processes are given.