Courses:

Overview

The broad context for this ICE-Topics module is the commonsense notion that, when designing something, one should plan for the off-normal conditions that may occur.  A continuous process is conceived and designed as a steady-state operation. However, the process must start up, shut down, and operate in the event of disturbances, and so the time-varying behavior of the process should not be neglected. It is helpful to consider the operability of a process early in the design, when alternatives are still being compared. In this module, we will examine some tools that will help to evaluate the operability of the candidate process at the preliminary design stage, before substantial effort has been invested.

Goals

I want you to learn about:

• continuous processes, although designed for steady state, will vary in time
• the Relative Gain Array, Disturbance Cost, and dynamic simulation as tools to use in design
• some basic notions of process control

Objectives

I plan to show you:

• a simple process that we can derive all the math for
• a more complicated process that we will examine by numerical calculations
• use of MATLAB® for matrix calculations
• the derivation and use of the RGA and DC screening tools

Grading

Simplicity itself: 8 problem sets, the lowest grade dropped, and the remaining 7 weighted equally. Course letter grades will be assigned on the conventional scale: A≥90% and so on.