Process Dynamics and Control

Every single process at a (chemical) engineering plant needs to be controlled. Effective control is not possible until the dynamics of the process is thoroughly understood, modelled and analyzed. In this course, the students will be given a taste of understanding, modelling, analyzing and controlling processes that they are already familiar with from their bachelor courses. The course makes this goal (of giving a complete overview of the task of control engineer) very clear in the introductory lectures. Subsequently, the classic modelling cycle is addressed where every step of the modelling cycle, such as making assumptions, formulating the mathematical equations, applying the correct boundary conditions, solving these mathematical equations (numerically), interpreting the degrees of freedom of the system. Once the students are equipped with this knowledge, the added tool of ‘Analysis’ is provided, where non-linearity in dynamic processes, linearization, point of linearization and its relationship with points of operation are discussed in detail. Stability of a system is also given some emphasis in this part, and connections are drawn with other Chemical Engineering courses. Subsequently, Laplace transforms, transfer functions, and analysis in the Laplace domain are discussed in detail. Model approximation, parametrization and interaction are subsequently discussed. Interactions among the various parts in a process introduce the control part of the course where Single Input Single Output (SISO) systems are discussed. Both feedback and feedforward control frameworks are introduced, then root locus diagrams, Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control and Internal Model Control (IMC) are also discussed. During the interaction part, it is clearly shown that in a real process, one part not only influences another part but also vice-versa. This is picked up further in the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) part. Plantwide control and batch control are also touched upon along with optimization as a tool for control, as well as preliminaries of engineering instrumentation.