The invention discloses a process monitoring method which is based on non-Gaussian component extraction and support vector description. The method comprises the following steps: read-in of training data and data to be diagnosed, data preprocessing, establishment of a principal component analysis model, particle swarm optimization algorithm, non-Gaussian projection calculation, support vector data description, residual analysis, principal component estimation, fault detection and the model updating. By the method, the non-Gaussian components can be automatically extracted from operating data of an industrial process, thus avoiding the disadvantage that the conventional statistical process monitoring method assumes that data is subject to normal distribution, and the non-Gaussian projection algorithm based on the particle swarm optimization algorithm ensures the maximization of the non-Gaussian properties of the extracted independent components, and avoids the problem that the independent component analysis method is easy to be involved in the locally optimal solution. Compared with the conventional statistical process monitoring method, the method can find abnormity in time, effectively reduce the rate of false alarm, and obtain better monitoring effect.