Industrial Process Automation - An Introduction

A chemical engineer might scale up the manufacture of a speciality chemical from lab scale to full production; a process engineer will design the process plant to manufacture the product, including sizing vessels, motors and pumps; a mechanical engineer might design the vessels and pipework; an instrument engineer will specify the sensors and transmitters needed to measure various physical quantities; and an electrical engineer will design the power supplies to motors, pumps and heaters.

But it is the automation engineer who makes all these elements come together to manufacture the product. This talk aims to provide an overview of the automation of industrial production by briefly looking at some typical processes and examining the various parts that make up a process control system.