An increasing effort is being devoted to consider controllability issues (or in a wider sense operability issues) at the process design stage. Controllability has mainly to do with dynamics in the face of disturbances. One philosophy for the integration of design and controllability is to explicitly consider dynamic elements within the process design formulation. An outstanding feature of dynamics is stability, which is related with the spectrum (set of eigenvalues) of the dynamic system Jacobian matrix. Dynamic convergence speed may also be analyzed in terms of the eigenvalues of the matrix from a Lyapunov function related to the Jacobian of the system. It is the purpose of this contribution to formulate and solve the chemical process design problem, considering process dynamics from an eigenvalue optimization approach. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.