difficult separation tasks especially when temperature-sensitive components or species exhibiting very similar thermodynamic properties are involved. Large-scale industrial applications have been reported from different industrial fields, e.g. in the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, bio-chemical, and also in the food industry. Chromatographic separations often cause a large fraction of the overall production cost, so efficient design and operation become mandatory when production cost matters for competitiveness. In this paper we present an overview of model-based techniques for optimisation and control of batch as well as continuous chromatographic separation processes. These methods also help to speed up process development which may even be more critical than the reduction of production cost. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.