Process Control
Process Control: A Practitioner’s Handbook is a practical guide to designing, commissioning, tuning and improving industrial control systems in mineral-processing plants.
Written for process engineers, metallurgists, control engineers, commissioning personnel, operators and technical managers, the book explains control in clear plant terms rather than as abstract theory. It shows how measurements, controllers, final control elements, process dynamics and operating constraints work together to determine plant stability and performance.
The handbook covers the full control lifecycle, from control philosophy and functional specification through configuration, FAT, installation, loop checking, SAT, water commissioning, first ore, tuning and operational handover. It also explains the practical use of regulatory control, cascade, ratio, feedforward, override, split-range, gain scheduling, soft sensors, expert systems and model predictive control.
Mineral-processing examples are used throughout, including:
- Grinding and classification control
- Cyclone-feed density and pressure control
- Sump-level and pump-speed control
- Flotation level, air and grade control
- Leach and CIL process control
- Cyanide, lime and reagent dosing
- Thickener control and bog recovery
- Online analysers and particle-size measurement
- Control-system architecture and safety systems
- Loop-performance monitoring and troubleshooting
Worked applications show how to diagnose unstable loops, distinguish poor tuning from valve stiction, commission cascade loops correctly, identify common plant-wide disturbances and improve nonlinear control performance.
The book also includes professional diagrams, historian-style trends, diagnostic flowcharts and practical templates that can be adapted for real projects and operating plants.
Process Control: A Practitioner’s Handbook is intended to help practitioners build control systems that are safer, more stable, easier to operate and better aligned with throughput, recovery, product quality and economic performance.