This study presents a typical industrial plant whose performance is severely affected by disturbances, particularly by changes in the operating point. This is typically the case for power plants, which can be treated as multi-variable dynamic systems. Measurements were made in the power plant for four different operating points in order to build a model to describe the dynamic behaviour. The dynamic model for these operating conditions of the multi-variable plant has been developed by application of parameter estimation methods. Based on these multi-variable models, two different types of adaptive control schemes have been tested by extended simulation studies. Because of the very promising results, preparations for practical application of the simulation results in the plant are now Linder work. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.