The optimization, monitoring and control of simulated moving bed (SMB) units require the use of a process model and the estimation of the model parameters. A systematic numerical procedure for determining parameters of SMB models from batch experiments is presented and evaluated. The unknown parameters are estimated by minimizing a cost function measuring the difference between experimental and simulated concentration profiles. In contrast with previous studies, parameter identifiability is studied and errors on the estimated parameters are calculated. A sensitivity analysis is used to design the experiments and to compare the identifiability of different chromatographic models. Then, the influence of local minima is evaluated by applying the numerical procedure on fictitious measurements generated from a model with known parameters. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.