Instrumentation and Process

Control
Lectures 2-5

1
•Describe your
method for driving
a car.
•Could you drive a
car without looking
out the windshield?
•What must be
provided by the car
designer?
•Can a “good design”
eliminate the need
to steer?
2
Feedback control for controlling room temperature?

3
4
5
 Objective of process control

objective of process control - to maintain a process at

the desired operating conditions, safely and
economically, while satisfying environmental and
product quality requirements

physical variable is measured by a sensor which

produces a physical response (e.g., electrical or
mechanical) that is related to the value of the process
variable

6
The foundation of process control is process
understanding

process - the conversion of feed materials to products

using chemical and physical operations

In large-scale, integrated processing plants such as oil

refineries or ethylene plants, thousands of process
variables such as compositions, temperatures, and
pressures are measured and must be controlled

7
8
 Control Terminology
controlled variables - these are the variables which
quantify the performance or quality of the final
product, which are also called output variables.
manipulated variables - these input variables are
adjusted dynamically to keep the controlled variables
at their set-points.
disturbance variables - these are also called "load"
variables and represent input variables that can
cause the controlled variables to deviate from their
respective set points.

9
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