Development of learning modules for process plant operation

Abstract

Advances in course content for the capstone design course in chemical engineering over the past 30 years have been very significant. Many of these advances have been facilitated by the increase in computing power now available to students through process simulators and other computational tools. Today expectations for the capstone design project are much higher than they were 20 years ago. Such expectations include multiple case studies, sophisticated optimizations including process economics, and life-cycle and safety analyses. However, very few chemical engineering graduates work for design and construction companies and those employed in the process industry will more likely work in an operating facility. The senior capstone design project provides students an opportunity to bring different concepts taught throughout the curriculum into the design of a chemical process. The question is: how well does a rigorous chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum and the associated capstone design project prepare a student for their first 1-2 years in process plant operations? It likely requires an integration of the process design, process control, and process safety courses to explain the operation of chemical processes effectively. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the approaches used by the authors to teach undergraduate students how chemical processes operate and to introduce a series of educational modules that address plant operation. The use of a standard steady-state simulator, the work horse of the capstone design course, is unhelpful in teaching about plant operations, rather a dynamic simulation of the process is required that possesses many of the features of the operating plant. Such features include the correct process dynamics, the control system, and safety features such as emergency relief valves and the appropriate digital logic to start and stop equipment. This approach naturally focuses on the level of information contained in a piping and instrument diagram (P&ID) rather than the process flow diagram (PFD) that is used most frequently in the capstone design. To this end, the authors have developed a dynamic model of a styrene production process and then discuss several modules that illustrate normal and abnormal operations of the plant. These modules introduce typical control schemes for the start-up of a part of the plant, a shut-down procedure that an operator might use to mitigate an unwanted process condition, an emergency relief system used to protect the integrity of a piece of equipment, and several other scenarios. A video of one of the procedures will also be shown in the presentation to illustrate the pedagogy used to design the system and to show the subsequent operation of the system. These modules or scenarios could be implemented in any or all of the design, control and safety courses with good effect.