Chemical Process Control Education and Practice

Chemical process control textbooks and courses differ significantly from their electrical or mechanical-oriented brethren. It is our experience that colleagues in electrical engineering (EE) and mechanical engineering (ME) assume that we teach the same theory in our courses and merely have different application examples. The primary goals of this article are to i) emphasize the distinctly challenging characteristics of chemical processes, ii) present a typical process control curriculum, and iii) discuss how chemical process control courses can be revised to better meet the needs of a typical B.S.-level chemical engineer. In addition to a review of material covered in a standard process control course, we discuss innovative approaches in process control education, including the use of case studies, distributed control systems in laboratories, identification and control simulation packages, and studio-based approaches combining lecture, simulation, and experiments in the same room. We also provide perspectives on needed developments in process control education.