Process Systems Engineering
The current research areas of emphasis in the process systems engineering area are:
• Control System Monitoring and
Diagnosis: multivariable control
performance assessment, performance diagnosis, minimum variance control benchmark,
MPC performance monitoring, fault detection, data reconciliation, sensor validation
• Dynamic Modeling of Chemical
Processes: microelectronics process
modeling, packed bed distillation, reactive distillation, flare combustion,
blood glucose (for diabetics), packed bed catalytic reactors, parameter
estimation software development, model reduction
• Materials Processing: chemical vapor deposition, measurement of
film composition and growth rate, plasma etching, lithography, rapid thermal
processing
• Dynamic System Identification: subspace identification methods, prediction
error methods, closed loop identification, design of experiments.
• Nonlinear Model Predictive Control and
Moving Horizon Estimation: large-scale
models, model-based control, constrained control, adaptive control,
multivariable control.
The combined process modeling,
control and optimization programs have 20 full-time graduate students and
several postdoctoral researchers supervising the ongoing research. Approximately 75 percent of the graduate
students are
Process control facilities
available for research include Emerson Delta V and National Instruments control
systems in experimental studies, and we also have numerous networks of PCs and
high-performance Linux clusters. Most
students carry out both theoretical and experimental research. Our program focuses on maintaining a balance
between fundamentals and practice.
The Texas-Wisconsin Modeling and
Control Consortium (TWMCC) carries out joint industrial-academic research in
the areas of chemical process modeling, monitoring, control and optimization;
see www.che.utexas.edu/twmcc. The TWMCC was established in 1993 in the
Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas. The consortium expanded its activities in
1995 to include the
Faculty