This clear, easy-to-comprehend resource offers a state-of-art treatment of the instrumentation, sensors and process control used in modern manufacturing. The book covers a wide range of technologies and techniques, fully explaining important related terminology. You learn how to use microprocessors for both analog and digital process control, as well as signal conditioning. Additionally, you gain a thorough understanding of the various types of valves and actuators used for flow control.

Fieldbus Technology (FT) is an enabling platform that is becoming the preferred choice for the next generation real-time automation and control solutions. This book incorporates a selection of research and development papers. Topics covered include: history and background, contemporary standards, underlying architecture, comparison between different Fieldbus systems, applications, latest innovations, new trends as well as issues such as compatibility, interoperability, and interchangeability.

Computational Intelligence (CI) and Bioprocess are well-established research areas which have much to offer each other. Under the perspective of the CI area, Biop- cess can be considered a vast application area with a growing number of complex and challenging tasks to be dealt with, whose solutions can contribute to boosting the development of new intelligent techniques as well as to help the refinement and s- cialization of many of the already existing techniques. Under the perspective of the Bioprocess area, CI can be considered a useful repertoire of theories, methods and techniques that can contribute and offer interesting alternative approaches for solving many of its problems, particularly those hard to solve using conventional techniques. Although throughout the past years CI and Bioprocess areas have accumulated substantial specific knowledge and progress has been quick and with a high degree of success, we believe there is still a long way to go in order to use the potentialities of the available CI techniques and knowledge at their full extent, as tools for supporting problem solving in bioprocesses. One of the reasons is the fact that both areas have progressed steadily and have been continuously accumulating and refining specific knowledge; another reason is the high level of technical expertise demanded by each of them. The acquisition of technical skills, experience and good insights in either of the two areas is very demanding and a hard task to be accomplished by any professional.