In this work, the predictive control of a three-phase catalytic reactor is considered. A predictive control algorithm, which has a non-linear internal. model represented by functional link networks, is proposed. This network structure has been shown to have a good, non-linear approximation capability, with the advantage that the estimation of its weight is a linear optimization problem. The results show the potential of the proposed procedure when it is applied to the 2-methyl-cyclohexanol production process, which is a non-linear, distributed parameter and-time-varying process, typical of many important industrial systems.