OptiControls

03/27/2025

Posted a case study/tutorial on split-range controls.

Split-Range Control – A Case Study Published March 25, 2025 Background A few weeks ago, a refinery got me out to tune the control loops on their thermal oxidizer. A thermal oxidizer (TOX) is a specialized combustion system that uses heat to destroy volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and hazardous a...

09/30/2024

Posted an article on the use of super-high controller gains: https://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1447

12/12/2019

Posted a new article on tuning slow-responding control loops.

Once in a while you’ll have to tune a control loop on a process that takes seemingly forever to settle out at its final value. This specifically applies to self-regulating processes where you traditionally have to wait for the process response to fully complete before you can analyze the data for ...

03/11/2017

Posted an article about tuning for setpoint changes vs. disturbances: http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1328

This discussion is as old as controller tuning itself: should one tune a controller to respond well to setpoint changes or to do well at rejecting disturbances. Different tuning rules have been developed for the two cases, and much research has been done to find the silver bullet of a tuning rule th...

12/01/2016

New tutorial on the use of signal filters in process control http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1319

07/22/2015

Posted a new article on solving a problem with erratic level controls. http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1305

06/20/2015

Registration is now open for the upcoming Process Control and Advanced Control Strategies online training course. Presented by Process Control Practitioner and Author, Jacques Smuts, this course will teach you how to effectively tune control loops and troubleshoot control problems. Also learn about advanced control strategies such as cascade, feedforward, ratio control, and much more.

Click here for more information and to register: http://ceipe.ku.edu/process-control-and-advanced-control-strategies

Process Control and Advanced Control Strategies October 1–May 19, 2016 Online training—Online sessions meet every Thursday at 7–8 p.m. Eastern Time

05/04/2015

Posted an article on control valve response time: http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1295

For a long time I suspected that control valves take longer to respond to small changes in controller output than to large ones. I have now confirmed this by doing tests on several control valves and analyzing the results.

01/17/2015

Posted a new article on controller tuning objectives: http://blog.opticontrols.com/archives/1222

Controller tuning is a mystery to most people who do not have firsthand experience with it. A process engineer recently asked me how I would know what speed of response his control loops should be tuned for. Using the analogy of guitar tuning, he asserted that if a control loop is not tuned for the…

01/15/2015

The numbers are in, and Process Control for Practitioners is again Amazon.com's best selling practical book on process control. Most of the competing books increased sales in 2014, but Process Control for Practitioners (by J.F. Smuts, Ph.D.) virtually doubled its sales year-over-year - firmly establishing it as the leading book on PID controller tuning and control loop optimization. More info at http://www.opticontrols.com/pcfp-book