Principles and Practice of Automatic Process Control

This book really delivers what it promises: A practical guide for understanding and implementing industrial control strategies, with many examples derived from the authors experienced. I am an Industrial Practitioner of Process Control. I have been working for more than 16 years as an Instrumentation, Automation, and Process Safety and Control Engineer for the Oil & Gas Industry. The book is written in a very clear and readable way. I am not a Chemical Engineer (I am an Electronics Engineering Grad) but my work requires me to deal with chemical engineering issues relates to process control in a day to day basics. This book has been an excellent reference in my job, and is always available in my desk. If a non-chemical engineer can benefit from this book, I can bet that any chemical engineering student or industrial practitioner dealing with automatic process control will find this text most useful. If you are looking for an excellent book, highly practical and applied, this is the one you should get.

Note the word 'truely'. Just the section on Installed Flow Characteristics on control valves is enough to worth buying this book. The writers solved the mystery on why an inherent "Equal Percentage" control valve behaves "Linear" when installed; and why an inherent "Linear" control valve behaves "Quick Opening" when installed in most chemical processes being controlled (should factors such as the over-sized factor, the fraction of the dynamic pressure taken by the control valve, and the rangeability of the control valve are overlooked). The writters did it by vigorously deriving the Installed Characteristics from the universal definition of "Cv" (first introduced by Masoneillan in industry, now adopted by ISA), fluid mechanics, and simple algebra, from which the installed gain at various percent-opening of most control valves is derivable analytically by math. Excellent job done. I have used this book since mid 1980's in my career as an Instrument Engineer and recently I used it in writing engineering specifications for control valves. For 15 years before mid 1980's, a book like this has been in my search list. While control theory can be easily found in many texts, unique relevant work experience of writters cannot. Whether you are a Chemical Engineer or not, if your work is related to Automatic Process Control, I will recommend you to buy this book. Before it gets sold out, I am going to buy the lattest edition tomorrow since I believe this book will be useful for at least the next 50 years from now in any process control industry.

llevo trabajando el texto desde 1998,obteniendo muy buenos resultados en la enseñanza del control de procesos. en particular creo que la obra presenta un excelente equilibrio entre la teoría y la práctica. adicionalmente los problemas enfrentan al estudiante con situaciones muy cercanas a las que encontraran en su vida profesional. a nivel de sugerencia para proximas ediciones, considero debe ser incluido el tema de los grados de libertad para control de plantas completas.

When it comes to automatic controls, Dr. Smith is incredibly knowledgable. Unfortunately, this does not always come through in this book. The book suffers from lack of sufficient worked examples to assist the reader in gaining competency in this area. At times, the theory takes leaps that leave the reader wondering how they did that. As with most engineering texts, once the reader fills in the missing steps the concepts become clear and logical. Overall, this is a worthwhile text from which the subject can be learned.