This paper describes the application of a linear iterative design of nonlinear predictive functional control for chamber pressure of industrial coke furnace. The control target is to maintain the chamber pressure of a coke furnace within a set range while rejecting the effect of disturbances (mainly the coke removing process and the switch of coke towers). The proposed control is easy to implement, as it selects a simple structure and a linear iterative approach instead of nonlinear control schemes to improve control performance in such a way that results compared with traditional PID controllers are improved. Application of industrial plant demonstrates the efficiency of the method. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.