Dynamic behaviour of integrated plants

The effect of material recycle and heat integration on the dynamics and control of chemical processing plants is considered. In analogy to linear control theory, one may consider how plant interconnections affect the fundamental properties of the dynamics, such as the poles and zeros. This implies that recycle of mass and energy, which are feedback mechanisms, affects the poles and thus possibly the plant stability, whereas parallel interconnections in a plant affect the zeros and thus the achievable performance of the plant under feedback control.