Case Study Projects in an Undergraduate Process Control Course

Authors

  • B. Wayne Bequette Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Kevin D. Schott Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Vinay Prasad Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Venkatesh Natarajan Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Ramesh R. Rao Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Abstract

During the last half of a process control course, students work in three-person teams on a multivariable control project selected from a choice of five processes. Each project is advised by a different member of an instructional team and includes many phases associated with a typical control design project. Students experiment with, and control, a process that is "masked" in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. This approach provides a sense of an industrial control problem, including working in a project team environment with a project advisor.

Author Biographies

B. Wayne Bequette, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

B. Wayne Bequette is Associate Professor of chemical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his BS from the University of Arkansas and spent several years as a process engineer at American Petrofina before obtaining his PhD from the University of Texas, Austin. His teaching and research interests are in process control, design, and biomedical engineering. 

Kevin D. Schott, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Kevin D. Schott received his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts and his MS in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has several years of experience with Monsanto and is completing his PhD at Rensselaer. His research involves multiple-model and gain-scheduling approaches to nonlinear control.

Vinay Prasad, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Vinay Prasad obtained a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and an MS from Kansas State University, both in chemical engineering. He is now pursuing his PhD at Rensselaer, and his research interests lie in process design, analysis, and control, with a focus on batch chemical processes.

Venkatesh Natarajan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Venkatesh Natarajan received his Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and his MS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, both in chemical engineering. He is pursuing a PhD at Rensselaer, where his research involves the scale-up and optimization of ion-exchange biochromatographic systems.

Ramesh R. Rao, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Ramesh R. Rao received a BE in chemical engineering from Annamalai University and a Masters from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Before joining Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to pursue a PhD, he spent two years as a research engineer at the Tata Research Design & Development Centre, Pune. His current research interests focus on model predictive control applications in chemical and biomedical engineering.

Downloads

Published

1998-07-01

Issue

Vol. 32 No. 3 (1998): Summer 1998

Section

Manuscripts