This award provides partial support for the participation of approxi- mately 15 U.S. engineers in a small conference intended to examine the state of the art in the control of particulate process operations. The meeting was organized jointly by Professors K. Rajamani and John A. Herbst of the University of Utah and Antti Niemi of the Control Engineering Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland. The conference will deal with all aspects of the control of particulate processes, including modeling, optimization and computer control. The processes of interest are: solid-solid and solid-liquid separation, agglomeration, comminution, crystallization, solvent extraction and leaching. Topics for sessions are: dynamic models, control strategies, theoretical aspects of control and expert systems, and process optimization. Advancement in the field of control in the past decade has been furthered primarily by three factors: new computer hardware, process instrumentation and process control theory. Much of the advanced work combining these three elements has been done in the U.S. and Finland. In fact, the earliest plant scale control application was implemented in Finland in the 1960's. Thus, Finnish research and operating experience leads the world in important respects, and it is highly appropriate that a joint U.S.-Finnish meeting be held to examine the state of the art and identify directions for future research. The particulate process industries, i.e., those involved with the processing of minerals, chemicals, cement and coal, face serious problems in energy costs and the declining reserve of raw materials. Thus they must constantly seek new technologies to remain competitive. Process control, or the regulation of their processing operations by computer, has emerged as one of the most important options available to these industries to improve plant productivity without enormous capital investment. This meeting of researchers and practitioners from the U.S., Finland, and several other countries, will contribute to the synthesis and enhancement of existing knowledge in this important field and set directions for needed future research.
