PROCESS DYNAMICS

AND CONTROL Dr K Moodley

February 2021
WEEK 1
 DYNAMIC PROCESSES
What is a process?
 The conversion of feed material to products using chemical and physical
operation
 What are the different types of processes?
Continuous, batch, semi-batch
 What are the operational regimes?
Steady-state, non-steady state
 An unsteady state process is called a dynamic or transient process
The purpose of a process control engineer is to understand and manipulate the
unsteady state behaviour of a process in order to normalize behaviour to the design
engineer’s specifications
A SIMPLE PROCESS: FILLING A
TANK Consider a tank being filled to a particular level, by
two operators using a manual valve, with the level
measured by a long dipstick.
Derive the dynamical behaviour of this system

Using the tank height h:

(1.1)
 Integrating:
A SIMPLE PROCESS: FILLING A
TANK
What are some problems associated with controlling the height in the tank
manually? :
• Delay in measurement. Overfilling can occur if the stick operator cannot
complete the measurement in time.
• Performance variations. Both stick and valve operators may vary in
attentiveness and speed of execution.
• Resources required. There are better uses for operating personnel.
• Unsafe conditions. There is too much potential for chemical exposure.
A SIMPLE PROCESS: FILLING A
TANK (OPEN-LOOP)
 What if when we commissioned the
plant, we timed exactly how long it
will take to fill our tank from h0 to
htarget for a particular Fi.
 Then if we control the flow rate of
the valve, from Fi = 0 immediately to
Fi , we will know exactly when the
tank is full.
 This can be a viable option and is
called an open-loop control, because
there is no feedback of the controlled
variable.
 A SIMPLE PROCESS: FILLING A
TANK (CLOSED-LOOP)
Alternatively, we can use the height in the tank to directly control the feed valve:
HOMEWORK 1 : GENERAL
CONCEPTS
1. A dynamical system
2. A manipulated variable
3. A controlled variable
4. Disturbance variable
5. Feedback control
6. Feedforward control
7. Openloop and closedloop
8. Damping and stability. Sketch the types of stability outputs that can occur over time.
 A SIMPLE PROCESS: FILLING A
TANK (CLOSED-LOOP)
For a more robust and stable control scheme we need
a sensor to replace the dipstick, a valve actuator to
htarget replace the valve operator, and a controller mechanism
hnear to replace the stick operator
We can use a computer scheme to control the valve if
we have feedback of the tank height:
Designate some height hnear close to htarget.

When set (1.2)

When , (1.3)
 PROCESS BEHAVIOUR
When h < hnear set Fi = Fmax using eq 1.1. assuming constant Fmax: Now is defined as
So

And When h > hnear then Fi = Fmax

(1.1)

hnear/htarget =

h/htarget