Industrial Automation in Unit Operations Labs

Abstract

Chemical engineering unit operation labsdo an excellent job of integrating the whole curriculumand exposing students to pilot-scale systems. Where theyare often lacking, though, is the exposure to and use ofreal-life industrial automation by the future graduates. Aunit operation lab that has been automated usingindustrial level paradigms and equipment is the focus ofthis paper. A partnership with a global automationmanufacturer (Emerson) was established and the lab wasretrofitted using industrial sensors and actuators, aDistributed Control System (DeltaV DCS), industrialnetworks (FOUNDATION Fieldbus and AS-i), HumanMachine Interface (HMI) screens, and systemredundancy. The details of the automation along with itsuse through the lab curriculum will be discussed. Thiscross-curricular approach benefits students as, throughthe regular unit operation labs, they become familiar withkey elements of an automated set-up, understand the needfor it and its limitations, see control loops in action,communicate to the units through the HMI, and use theHMI to recover historical data on the processes. The labis a meso-scale of a processing facility and preparesstudents for field work after graduation. At the sametime, the traditional exposure to “manually operated”sensors and final elements is maintained as some of theunits have not been converted to fully automated systems