A Real-Time Approach to Process Control

Throughout the chemical industry, ever more emphasis is being placed upon extracting increasingly greater value from existing plant equipment. Improved process control is almost unique in its ability to deliver substantial operational improvements with little, or no additional, capital investment. As such, process control has rapidly become one of the most important and sought-after skills within the chemical industry. The industry needs graduates educated and trained in the latest and most relevant skills, as its practitioners rely heavily on commercially available process simulation tools and hands-on, time-based control strategy development techniques. A Real-Time Approach to Process Control brings together introductory process control education and real industry practice. While avoiding the use of complex and highly mathematical techniques, this text focuses instead on the more practical and applied time-domain techniques derived from modern process simulation. Assuming no prior knowledge of process control, this text provides both a theoretical and practical introduction to this increasingly important area. The use of computers in process control is a central theme running throughout this text, and their use in simulations and the software is carefully introduced. The reader will gain a thorough understanding of instrumentation, process design versus controllability trade-offs, control loop configurations and tuning, and practical techniques for the control of vessels, distillation columns and basic plant-wide control considerations. A Real-Time Approach to Process Control: * Is an applied introduction to the theory and practice of modern process control. * Avoids the use of complex mathematics, focusing instead on real-time systems. * Introduces dynamic simulation software and enables the reader to understand how and why it is used. * Includes many examples and carefully designed workshops, providing hands-on experience. * Has its own Web site at http: //www.ench.ucalgary.ca/ real-time. This essential introduction to modern process control is suitable for students taking process control courses, as well as engineers interested in learning more about real-time systems and applications of dynamic simulation software.