Chapter 1. Introduction

The goal of this chapter is to provide a motivation for, and an introduction to, process control and instrumentation. After studying this chapter, the reader, given a process, should be able to do the following:

• Determine possible control objectives, input variables (manipulated and disturbance) and output variables (measured and unmeasured), and constraints (hard or soft), as well as classify the process as continuous, batch, or semicontinuous

• Assess the importance of process control from safety, environmental, and economic points of view

• Sketch a process instrumentation and control diagram

• Draw a simplified control block diagram

• Understand the basic idea of feedback control

• Understand basic sensors (measurement devices) and actuators (manipulated inputs)

• Begin to develop intuition about characteristic timescales of dynamic behavior

The major sections of this chapter are as follows:

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Instrumentation

1.3 Process Models and Dynamic Behavior

1.4 Control Textbooks and Journals

1.5 A Look Ahead

1.6 Summary