Introduction

Abstract

In this chapter an overview of the main topics covered in the book is provided. The four main problems to be solved in order to achieve effective control and monitoring of chemical batch reactors, namely modeling, identification, control, and fault diagnosis, are presented. Then, the contents of each chapter are briefly discussed, thus allowing to delineate a roadmap toward the target. This pattern is initiated by introducing the main object of the book, i.e., the chemical batch reactor, the relevant modeling approaches and the relationship with the user, i.e., the methods used to measure and manipulate the state variables, are build up with the discussion of the above mentioned problems and is concluded with some suggestions for further research activity in this field.