Limit cycles caused due to valve non-linearity such as stiction can be eliminated with proper valve maintenance. Since valve maintenance is usually scheduled during production stops and with production stops scheduled typically once every six months to three years, the loss of product quality and energy loss during this intermediate period can be quite high. Stiction compensation algorithms can mitigate this problem to a large extent. In this paper, an optimization based approach for stiction compensation much in the sprit of predictive control strategies is proposed. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.