Prof. Ir. Dr.

Mohd Azlan Hussain

PROCESS CONTROL
FUNDAMENTALS
CH 3031
FACULTY OF CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING
 In the chemical industry,

the design of a control system is essential to ensure:

1.Process Safety
2.Minimization of Environment Impact
3.Product Quality
4.Good Process Operation

Process Control
  What is the purpose of a process control system?
“To maintain important process characteristics at
desired targets despite the effects of external
perturbations.”
Perturbations Processing
objectives
Plant

Market Safety
Economy Make $$$
Climate Environment...
Upsets...

Control

Process Control
 Process Control

 Steps necessary to ensure process operates at

required conditions and produced the products
at required specification

 Time based concept

Process Control
 CONTROL OBJECTIVE
To maximize profits by transforming raw materials into
useful products while satisfying a number of important
criteria:
1. Safety: to protect well-being of plant personnel and
nearby communities.
2. Environmental Regulations: to comply with
environmental regulations concerning air and water
quality as well as waste disposal.
3. Product specifications: to sell plant’s product,
product specification, concerning quality and
production rate, must be met.
4. Operational Constraints: process variables must
satisfy certain other operating constrains

Process Control
 PROCES CONTROL

 Process Dynamics:

• Study of the transient behavior of

processes
• the use
 Process of process dynamics for the
Control
improvement of process operation and
performance
Or
• the use of process dynamics to alleviate the
effect of undesirable (unstable) process
behaviors

Process Control
What constitutes a process?

A process, P, is an operation that takes an INPUT or a

DISTURBANCE and gives an OUTPUT

u
y
P
d

Information Flow
INPUT: (u) Something that you can manipulate
DISTURBANCE: (d) Something that comes as a result of some
outside phenomenon
OUTPUT: (y) An observable quantity that we want to regulate

Process Control
 Examples of Process
Examples: Temperature of Stirred Tank
 Control Objective
 Measured Process Variable (PV)
 Set Point (SP)
M  Controller Output (CO)
 Manipulated Variable
 Disturbances (D)
Tin, w

T, w
Q

Inputs Output
Tin
w Process T
Q

Process Control
What constitutes a control system?
Control

Combination of process
sensors, actuators and
computer systems
designed and tuned
to orchestrate
safe and profitable
operation.

Plant

Process Control
 Examples of Control System

• Control Objective
• Measured Process Variable (PV)
• Set Point (SP)
• Controller Output (CO)
• Manipulated Variable
• Disturbances (D) thermostat
controller

set point TC TT
heat loss
temperature
(disturbance)
sensor/transmitter
control
signal

fuel flow furnace

valve

Copyright © 2007 by Control Station, Inc. All Rights Reserved

13 Process Control
 Examples of Control System

Closed-loop Artificial Pancreas

u
glucose
setpoint y
r

controller pump patient sensor

measured glucose  Control Objective

 Measured Process Variable (PV)
 Set Point (SP)
 Controller Output (CO)
 Manipulated Variable
 Disturbances (D)

Process Control
Examples: Control of Stirred-Tank Heater

Heater
Q T, w
TC
Thermocouple
Tin, w
Controller Heater T
TR e u y
+ Q
C A
- P
Tank
M

Thermocouple

Process Control
  Identification of all process variables
Disturbances Other

Manipulated
Process Control

Controller

Input Variables Output Variables

• Disturbance variable • Measured variable

• Variables affecting process that are due • temperature of tank
to external forces
• Unmeasured variable
• Manipulated variable • level of tank
• Things that we can directly affect, • Control variable
the system, heater perimeter.
• important observable quantities that we
want to regulate

Process Control
 Control development is usually carried out following these important
steps
Define objectives

Develop a proces
model
Often an iterative
process, based on Design controller ba sed
performance we may on model
decide to retune,
redesign or remodel a Test by simulation
given control system

Commissioning,
Implement and tune

Monitor performance

Process Control
 Objectives
• “What are we trying to control?”

 Process modeling
• “What do we need?”
• Mechanistic and/or empirical
Controller design
• “How do we use the knowledge of process behavior to reach our
process control objectives?”
• What variables should we measure?
• What variables should we control?
• What are the best manipulated variables?
• What is the best controller structure?

Process Control
  Implement and tune the controlled process
• Test by simulation
• incorporate control strategy to the process hardware
• theory rarely transcends to reality
• tune and re-tune

 Monitor performance
• periodic retuning and redesign is often necessary based on
sensitivity of process or market demands
• statistical methods can be used to monitor performance

Process Control
THE END