At the
University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, Dr Peter Parker, associate
professor in the Department of Paper Engineering, Chemical Engineering,
and Imaging in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences is
overseeing a project to turn an Armfield UOP3BM batch, manually
controlled, distillation column into a computer controlled, continuous
model. Students will then use the column in both separations and
process control courses. The overall goal of the work is to give
the students an user-friendly interface to the PLC controlled distillation
column. The interface was developed last year by BS student Erin
Zahnow as a senior project. (Ms. Zahnow took 2nd place in the Educational
Division Student Poster Session at the Fall National AIChE meeting
in San Francisco in November 2003). Mr. Janakiraman Pandian, an
MS student in Electrical and Computer Engineering is continuing
the work on the project.
The UOP3BM batch distillation column contains eight 50mm diameter
sieve plates, reboiler, and condenser. Each plate, the reboiler,
and the condenser have temperature sensors. An additional set of
sensors measure condenser water and column vapor temperatures. The
temperatures can be individually displayed on the Armfield control
module. Dr Parker is aiming to allow the simultaneous display of
temperature and composition data from all eight plates, reboiler
and condenser. Control will be done using an Allen-Bradley SLC 503
and the interface will be built using Rockwell Automation's RSView.
T-x-y data will be entered by the students from other experiments
or will be determined by simulation. Column temperature measurments
will be used with the T-x-y data to infer compositions. As conversion
to continuous operation progresses, various pump, level, and boiler
controls will be added to the control interface.
Said Dr Parker: "It will give students practical experience
in distillation and process control. It presents them with a process
which can be seen as a process control problem and as a distillation
problem using process control. It will also allow them to integrate
knowledge from simulation and thermodynamic courses."
Western Michigan University's chemical engineering laboratories
are also equipped with Armfield's gas absorption unit (UOP7), the
HT14 and HT17 heat transfer units, the HT30X heat tranfer base with
the double pipe, shell and tube, and jacketed vessel heat exchangers,
and the hydraulics bench with the F1-15 (Bernoulli's Theorem) unit.
All of the laboratories are used to provide practical reinforcement
of material presented in lecture.
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