Process Control Systems (PCS) are distributed control systems (DCS)
that are specialized to meet the requirements of the process
industries. Many processes and plants of that domain have high safety
and availability requirements, are instrumented with a large number of
sensors and actuators and show a rather high degree of automation at
least in standard operation regimes. There are remarkable differences
and cross-discipline interdependencies between chemical-physical
properties of the substances, prodedures, unit operations, equipment,
instrumentation and control strategies. This results in the observation
that there hardly any two plants that are identical, even if the
products are interchangeable. Thus, it is not surprising, that there is
an ongoing discussion if each domain of the process industries, namely
chemicals, pharma, pulp & paper, oil & gas, food & beverages and
water/waste water treatment should have its own specialized automation
system. On the contrary, there are some opinions that PCS architectures
that address all of the distinct requirements of the process
industries, should even be generic enough to render the distinction
between PCS and e.g. DCS for power generation and distribution a merely
marketing or historical issue, not a technical one. This text book
contributes towards that discussion simply by putting its focus on PCS
engineering basics that are common to the different domains of the
process industries. The examples and exercises are related to an
experimental research plant which serves for the exploration of the
interaction between process modularization and process automation
methods in the process industries. This makes it possible to capture
features of highly specialized and integrated mono-product plants (e.g.
chemicals) as well as application areas which are dominated by locally
standardized general-purpose apparatus and multi-product schemes
(bio-chemistry, pharma). While the theory presented in this text book
is applicable for all of the PCS of the different established vendors,
the examples as well as most of the screen shots refer to PCS 7,
Siemens’ control system for the process industries. Focusing on a
single PCS makes it possible to use this text book not only in basic
lectures on PCS Engineering but also in computer lab courses that allow
students gaining hands-on experience.
