Introduction

Abstract

The last few decades have witnessed a dramatic change in the chemical process industries. Modern industrial processes have become now highly integrated with respect to material and energy flows, constrained ever more tightly by high quality product specifications, and subject to increasingly strict safety and environmental regulations. These more stringent operating conditions have placed new constraints on the operating flexibility of chemical processes and made the performance requirements for process plants increasingly difficult to satisfy. The increased emphasis placed on safe and efficient plant operation dictates the need for continuous monitoring of the operation of a chemical plant and effective external intervention (control) to guarantee satisfaction of the operational objectives. In this light, it is only natural that the subject of process control has become increasingly important in both the academic and industrial communities. In fact, without process control it would not be possible to operate most modern processes safely and profitably, while satisfying plant quality standards.