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1. The Excitement of Control Engineering

1.2.1 Market Globalization Issues

Market globalization is increasingly occurring, and this situation means that, to stay in business, manufacturing industries are necessarily placing increasing emphasis on issues of quality and efficiency. Indeed, in today's society, few if any companies can afford to be second best. In turn, this focuses attention on the development of improved control systems, so that processes operate in the best possible way. In particular, improved control is a key enabling technology underpinning

  • enhanced product quality,
  • waste minimization,
  • environmental protection,
  • greater throughput for a given installed capacity,
  • greater yield,
  • deferring of costly plant upgrades, and
  • higher safety margins.

All of these issues are relevant to the control of an integrated plant such as that shown in Figure 1.2.


  
Figure 1.2: Process schematic of a Kellogg ammonia plant
Process schematic of a Kellogg ammonia plant