Deployment of the Festo PA Workstation for Undergraduate Training on Industrial Process Automation

Abstract

Industrial automation involves the use of machines, control systems and information technologies in optimizing productivity in the production of goods and delivery of services. The Festo compact process automation (PA) workstation is a piece of laboratory equipment designed for the training of process automation engineers. It consist of programmable logic controller (PLC) rack, output devices (including several valves, a motor, a centrifugal pump etc), input devices (including flow sensor, heat sensor, level sensor, pressure sensor), switches, network of pipes, two storage tanks a heating and a cooling system. This paper presents the automation of liquid control process implemented on the PA workstation using PLC programming, manual liquid process control using Human Machine Interface (HMI) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. These devices and systems are all networked together with the workstation through Ethernet and Field-Bus (Profibus) technology. Process visualization from HMI and SCADA runtime screens are presented and analyzed to validate the integrity of the PA workstation in implementing process control. The results obtained shows that the workstation can mimic most industrial processes and deployable for the enhancement of students' training on process automation.