01 - Laplace Transform for Process Control

Transient operation occurs during important situations such as start-ups and shutdowns, unusual process disturbances, and planned transitions from one product grade to another.

Even at normal operation, a process does not operate at a steady state (with all time derivatives of the differential equations exactly zero) because there are always variations in external variables, such as feed composition or cooling medium temperature.

Thus, knowledge of steady-state (or static) process properties, learned in previous courses (such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, mass transfer, reaction engineering), is not sufficient for control design.