Chemical process control : present status and future needs ; the view from European industry

Abstract

Not only in Europe, chemical process control is characterized by a broad invasion of distributed control systems into chemical plants. The information integration from process control up to business management is a great challenge of today which follows from the overall computerization of production. Most of the recent progress in process automation results from the application of computer science paradigms to control systems, and of advanced developments in field instrumentation. Despite these advances and the considerable progress made in process control theory, there is only limited acceptance and application of modern advanced process control methodologies in industrial practice. This paper is an attempt to summarize the European discussion on the reasons for these facts.