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Understanding Chemical Process Control

This chapter discusses the importance of chemical process control, highlighting its advantages such as enhanced safety, environmental compliance, and improved product quality. As competition and regulatory demands increase, modern plants require effective automatic control systems to manage complex processes and maintain desired operating conditions. The primary goal of process control is to ensure safe and efficient operations while adhering to quality and environmental standards.

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4 views11 pages

Understanding Chemical Process Control

This chapter discusses the importance of chemical process control, highlighting its advantages such as enhanced safety, environmental compliance, and improved product quality. As competition and regulatory demands increase, modern plants require effective automatic control systems to manage complex processes and maintain desired operating conditions. The primary goal of process control is to ensure safe and efficient operations while adhering to quality and environmental standards.

Uploaded by

kumarsiid
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

In this chapter we examine the concept of chemical process control and introduce several examples to

illustrate the necessity for process modeling as we begin our study of process dynamics and control.
WHY PROCESS CONTROL?
As competition becomes stiffer in the chemical marketplace and processes become more complicated to
operate, it is advantageous to make use of some form of automatic control.
Automatic control of a process offers many advantages, including
• Enhanced process safety
• Satisfying environmental constraints
• Meeting ever-stricter product quality specifications
• More efficient use of raw materials and energy
• Increased profitability
Considering all the benefits that can be realized through process control, it is well worth the time and
effort required to become familiar with the concepts and practices used in the field.

In recent years the performance requirements for process plants have become increasingly difficult to
satisfy. Stronger competition, tougher environmental and safety regulations, and rapidly changing
economic conditions have been key factors in tightening the product quality specifications. A further
complication is that the modern plants have become more difficult to operate because off the trend
toward complex and highly integrated processes. For such plants it is difficult to prevent disturbances
from propagating from one unit to the other interconnected units.
In view of the increased emphasis placed on safe, efficient plant operation, it is only natural that the
subject of process control has become increasingly important in recent years. Without (computer-based)
process control systems it would be impossible to operate modern plants safely and profitably while
satisfying product quality and environmental requirements.
The primary objective o process control is to maintain a process at the desired operating conditions,
safely and efficiently, while satisfying environmental and product quality requirements. The subject of
process control is concerned how to achieve these goals. In large-scale, integrated processing plants,
such as oil refineries or ethylene plants, thousands of process variables such as compositions,
temperature, and pressures are measured and must be controlled. Fortunately, large numbers of process
variables (mainly flow rates) can usually be manipulated for this purpose. Feedback control systems
compare measurements with their desired values and then adjust the manipulated variables accordingly.

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