Ind. Eng. Chem. Res.
2003, 42, 4423-4424 4423
Preface to the Luyben Special Issue
It seems altogether appropriate that a special issue
in honor of William L. (Bill) Luyben should appear in
this the 70th year of his life. It is a distinct pleasure for
us to provide this preface as we join the many friends,
colleagues, and former students from all over the world
to celebrate Bill’s life and his contributions to the
practice of chemical engineering and to chemical engi-
neering education. Even though these papers cover a
variety of topics in chemical process systems engineer-
ing and come from a dozen or so countries from around
the world and even though some of the papers are from
academia while some are from industry, the unifying
theme of practicality is unmistakable. This is an overt
tribute to the fact that Bill Luyben is recognized as
arguably the most practical of all academics in the last
50 years to have worked in the area of process control
and the impact of process design on control system
performance.
Bill received his undergraduate education in chemical
engineering at The Pennsylvania State University and
his graduate training at the University of Delaware,
graduating with a Ph.D. in 1963. What may not be as
well-known in the community is that, between getting
his B.S. degree and enrolling for his graduate studies
at the University Delaware, Bill actually spent time
studying Business Administration while working for
Exxon, receiving an MBA from Rutgers University in
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel.: (302)
831-4504. Fax: (302) 831-1048. E-mail: ogunnaike@
che.udel.edu.
†
Tel.: +886-2-3365-1759. Fax: +886-2-2362-3040. E-mail:
ccyu@ntu.edu.tw.
10.1021/ie030520d CCC: $25.00 © 2003 American Chemical Society
Published on Web 08/19/2003
1958, well before MBA’s “took over” the management
of most of the chemical industry (for better or worse).
He did not begin his academic career at Lehigh Uni-
versity until 1967, by which time he had spent a total
of almost 10 years in industry, first as a Process
Engineer at Exxon (from 1955 to 1960, with a 2-year
assignment in Iran) and then as a Control Engineer at
DuPont from 1963 to 1967 where he worked closely with
the legendary Page Buckley. From the vantage point of
almost 4 decades, one may now better appreciate how
these years in industry influenced Bill as a teacher,
mentor, and contributor to the process systems engi-
neering literature and to chemical engineering educa-
tion.
As many in the academic community will readily
admit, Bill’s approach to research in general, and to
process control in particular, is quite unique. In the vast
majority of Bill’s publications, one will find this unique
trademark of strong emphasis on practical consider-
ations over theoretical elegance. From his early work
on distillation control (which continues to be the stan-
dard starting point for most industrial control systems
development for this critical unit operation) to the
control of reactive distillation and his more recent series
of papers on plantwide control, especially on the impact
of recycle streams, Bill’s practical focus has quietly
informed an entire generation of industrial practitio-
ners. Bill, of course, is characteristically unapologetic
about his approach, and we suppose he must derive a
certain sense of vindication from the fact that a citation
analysis of his publications is really quite impressive.
Excluding self-citation, to date, his papers/books have
been cited over 1700 times, resulting in an average of
4424 Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 42, No. 20, 2003
roughly nine citations per paper/book. Thus, while some
may disagree with Bill’s philosophical approach, there
is no denying the fact that he has influenced the practice
of process control at the grassroots level perhaps more
than any other academic and that his books and papers
are consulted by many chemical engineers all over the
world.
Bill’s concern for practical relevance has been the
single most consistent driving force behind all that he
has done, and this is the defining characteristic that
best captures the essence of his impact on the practice
of process control. His first book, Process Modeling,
Simulation, and Control for Chemical Engineers pub-
lished in 1973 by McGraw Hill, was one of the first to
offer an integrated treatment of mathematical modeling,
computer simulation, and process control. It was “dedi-
cated to the engineer: the scientist who converts the
feasible into the practical”. Bill has also built a reputa-
tion for “keeping the control community honest” espe-
cially when it comes to the design and implementation
of control systems that are more sophisticated than the
classic PID controller. He is well-known for his skepti-
cism about the true efficacy of many of the modern
control techniques, having seen, in a lifetime that began
with pneumatic instrumentation and analogue comput-
ers, many technologies burst forth only to fade away
quietly for lack of practicality. Nevertheless, in the
words of a well-respected member of the process control
community, “If I had a tough industrial control problem
that needed a practical solution, Bill Luyben is the
person I would seek”.
Bill’s dedication to educating the next generation has
been truly admirable and many of his former graduate
students have gone on to become leaders in their own
rights. This is particularly true of the significant
number of international students from such countries
as Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Venezuela,
and Taiwan, who have studied under Bill and subse-
quently returned to their home countries, in many cases
rising to leadership positions, greatly extending Bill’s
contribution to the larger international community.
Many of these former students still remember vividly
the unscheduled research discussions on rainy days (Bill
is a dedicated part-time farmer). They recall fondly how
their youthful minds were inspired by his gentle means
of guidance: his inquiry about underlying physical
principles, his suggestions for what the next steps might
be, and his encouraging words (“I am sure you can do
better than this”).
In addition to his research and mentoring of graduate
students, Bill devoted much of his time and energy over
35 plus years at Lehigh University to undergraduate
education. His influence on generations of chemical
engineering students at Lehigh University is legendary
(from the introductory chemical engineering course to
the unit operations laboratory, to the process control
course, and through the capstone process design course).
He was the primary guiding force behind a number of
curriculum changes aimed at sustaining the Lehigh
tradition of educating engineering students in both
theory and practice. Several of his eight published books
are devoted to undergraduate education (Chemical
Process Analysis; Process Modeling, Simulation, and
Control for Chemical Engineers, 1st and 2nd eds.;
Essentials of Process Control; Plantwide Dynamic Simu-
lators in Chemical Processing and Control). All are
characterized by Bill’s unique style and practical focus.
It seems altogether fitting and appropriate that Ind.
Eng. Chem. Res. should publish this special issue
because much of Bill’s work was published in this
journal. We thank Editor Donald R. Paul, who continues
to make such special issues possible for the Chemical
Engineering community. We now join all of the con-
tributors to this Festschrift and Bill Luyben’s family
(wife Janet, sons William and Michael, and grandchil-
dren Nathaniel, Trevor, and Elizabeth) in wishing him
a happy 70th birthday, while thanking him for his many
contributions to the practice of process systems engi-
neering.
Babatunde A. Ogunnaike*
Chemical Engineering Department, University of
Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716
Cheng-Ching Yu†
Department of Chemical Engineering, National
Taiwan University, Taipei 106-17, Taiwan
IE030520D