Patent ID: 7319040

Claim:
A method to obtain an improved estimate of a process or product property useful in controlling a chemical manufacturing process, comprising: a. performing the chemical manufacturing process; b. employing a process model selected from the group consisting of empirical, semi-empirical and first principles models, to generate an estimate of at least one such property; c. employing an on-line analyzer to generate data which can be transformed mathematically to yield scores indicative of variability in such property; d. mathematically transforming the aforesaid data obtained from the on-line analyzer in step (c) to obtain a set of statistically significant scores correlative to the property; e. combining the scores obtained in step (d) with the process model to obtain a combined model; and f. optimizing the combined model by a linear or non-linear regression analysis, to generate an improved estimate of the property used in controlling the manufacturing process; provided the process model is not derived from regression of directly measured process variables only with scores.