Customer Reviews

Process Dynamics and Control

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Four years of chemical engineering education and finally, a book worth remembering. Seborg leaves nothing out. From the simplest principles to the weirdest homework problems, the book does a great job of TEACHING, not just INFORMING. As a reference, it might not be too great, but for pure teaching effect, this is the absolute best choice.

This book is an introductory course that provides an appropriate balance between process control theory and practice. In particular it emphasizes on dynamic behavior, physical and empirical modeling, computer simulation, measurement and control technology, basic control concepts, and advanced control strategies.

The mathematical level of the book is oriented toward a junior or senior student who has taken at least one course in differential equations. Additional mathematical tools required for the analysis of control systems are introduced along the book as needed. The book emphasizes process control techniques that are used in practice and provides detailed mathematical analysis only when it is essential for understanding the material. Key theoretical concepts are illustrated with examples.

The book is divided in four parts. Part I (chapters 1 to 2) provides an introduction to process control and an in-depth discussion on process modeling. The development of dynamic models for representative processes, like a stirred-tank blending system are used as illustrative examples throughout the book.

Part II (chapters 3 to 7) is concerned with the analysis of the dynamic behavior of processes. A key issue is the determination of the transient response that occurs after a process disturbance occur, a grade change is initiated, or a process is started up or shut-down. Important analysis toll are introduced, the Laplace transform and the transfer function. For many practical control applications, it is not feasible to develop a physically based, dynamic model. For this the important topic of empirical models and their development from plant and process data are presented. Both continuous-time and discrete-time models are considered here.

Part III (chapters 8 to 15) addresses the fundamental concepts of feedback and feedforward control. The topics included the PID controller and an overview of the process instrumentation and control hardware and software that are necessary to implement process control, The important relationship between process design and process control is emphasized, and a whole section is dedicated to process safety. The design and analysis of feedback control systems, as well as new methods for controller design, tuning, and troubleshooting receive considerable attention. This part concludes with a chapter on feedforward and ratio control.

Part IV (chapters 16 to 24) is concerned with advanced process control techniques. The topics include digital control, multivariable control and enhancements of PID control, such as cascade control, selective control, and gain scheduling. Powerful techniques like real time optimization and model predictive control (MPC) that have had significant impact on industrial practice are covered on dedicated and separated chapters. Also process monitoring, batch processes control, and plant-wide control are also developed on individual chapters. Illustrative case studies are included in this part of the book.

Even though the book is designed for Chemical Engineering students, I truly believe that this text would also be suitable for industrial practitioners and students in mechanical, industrial, and electrical engineering. I am an Industrial Practitioner of Process Measurement & Control who has been working in the Process Industries for more than 16 years as an Automation, Instrumentation, Process Safety and Process Control Engineer. My academic background is in electrical and electronics engineering (I am an Electronic Engineer), not in chemical engineering as might be the case of the usual reader of this book, but working in the Oil & Gas Industry all this time, I have been dealing with Chemical-Process Control issues in a day-to-day basics. I found this book to be a very useful reference and refresher to gain a better understanding of Modern Process Control Applications.

The book is organized in reasonable short chapters what makes it more readable and modular, which makes it also suitable for self-study by engineers in industry.

This book shows how to think and approach and find out the way to solve your problems in the process control field. It contains a lot of examples of actual process properties,dynamics and simulation models, and control problems. And there is a introduction to the advanced control systems.

Overall, this book helped me make sense of a fairly difficult course. Unfortunately, I would often find myself spinning my wheels trying to solve example problems and derive equations that were full of typos. I know all textbooks have errors, but this one seemed worse than most. I would highly recommend downloading the errata list before reading anything. The book provided pretty clear explanations of most topics, but some things were out of order and seemed a little confusing. Rudimentary topics that had been used throughout the entire text and were necessary to understand parts of many chapters were explained late in the book and were often difficult to find. Many of the example problems also did not show solutions in enough depth.

I have just finished a postgraduate course in process dynamics based on this book. I have a maths background so I found some of the concepts hard going at the start of the course. I have used this book costantly throughout the course and I have found it to be excellent. It has really helped my understanding of the subject, so much so that I want to write my Master`s thesis in process engineering and process dynamics. I have enjoyed everything about the course and it is all because of this book.

Process dynamics and control is a vast subject, profoundly important for maximizing value in plant operations, but unfortunately often neglected by undergraduate students. This book by three of the most illustrious professors of chemical engineering distills their expertise and wisdom, as teachers with about 100 years combined teaching experience, into a highly accessible and cogent textbook. The book contains excellent discussions and expositions of just about all the technical concepts one would ever need in industrial practice. The example problems are juicy, to say the least, and complement the text very nicely. Those who know how to use Matlab or Mathematica will benefit hugely from solving the computer problems. In my opinion, this book should be a required text for all undergraduate chemical engineering programs, along with the book by Prof. Harmon Ray and B. Ogunnaike (Oxford).

So to begin, This book was absolute hell. It gave a pretty good overview of what the class was about. But it contains over 200 errors (don't believe me?? go to the wiley site) this made the class incredibly hard to do because when I had assignments I would end up proceeding and come to a hault and realize my answer wasn't correct. I would come to find out that that problem contained an error in it. If you are really into this type of major then I would say to choose a different book

I cant understand why people rate this book positively. This book was hell to read, it needs more examples, both simple and complicated. This book is crap. I salute those who get the material, good luck to the rest!!

i got this book to learn controll not to apply it, so its helping me so far...

a book is never bad, its only missunderstood.

I bought this book to teach myself some process control and just went through the first several chapters. So this review is based on the **limited** exposure to the book and is written by someone with very little prior knowledge on process control.

So far, I'm enjoying the book. It provides necessary mathematics in an easy to digest format and gently breaks into process control. Some flaws I have noticed so far are

1. A large number of typos, not all of which is listed in the Oct.3, 2010 version of errata. Even the errata contains an error. This is not a huge problem if you follow the book with a stack of scratch paper to verify every single step. One would have to do that anyway just to learn from a book. So, perhaps this isn't a huge deal.

2. The Process Control Module advertised in Appendix E is nowhere to be found on the publisher's web page. BTW, why does this appendix refer to the book as if it isn't a part of the book? A little more editing please?

3. Their definition of the step function is incompatible with the properties they assign to the Dirac delta-function. According to their definition, the integral of the delta-function, regarded as the derivative of the step function, from t=0 to t=infinity is zero and not unity. This, seemingly minute, point does create a confusion from time to time, e.g, when extracting the initial condition from an ODE, containing a step function as a perturbation term, by setting t=0. Also these two functions, as defined in the book, violate Eq.(3.9).

4. This is perhaps intentional on the part of the authors. But, CSTR in example 2.5 affords three steady-states. Two are stable but the other is not. Somehow, the authors choose to work with the unstable one. Some comment would be of great help here...

Despite these drawbacks, I do think that the book is well worth the read and actually teaches me something useful. So, I will keep it and read it. It is unfortunate that it tends to impose an undue burden on the readers, though.