(186g) Providing Chemical Engineering Seniors an Industry-like Control Room Experience through a Remotely Operated Gas Permeation Experiment

As part of the renovation of the chemical engineering laboratory at Manhattan College, the gas permeation experiment was redesigned for remote operation. The objective of the modification was to provide students a hands-on understanding of how process parameters are monitored and changed as needed from within a control room in a chemical engineering plant. State-of-the-art PRISM membranes were donated by Air Products to replace the existing membrane modules in the setup. Electronically operated on-off valves, needle valve, pressure regulator, pressure transducers, thermocouples, and oxygen sensors were plumbed into the experiment. A set of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and software were used to enable complete operation of the experiment using a desktop computer. Remote access software was then used to provide students taking the senior-level laboratory courses with scheduled access to the computer to carry out the experiment from a location inside the engineering building but outside the chemical engineering laboratory itself. In the first half of this presentation, the experimental setup will be explained, including details on how the experiment is carried out by the students. In the second half of the presentation, the presenter will provide a live demonstration of the experiment by running an operating condition in coordination with graduate assistants present in the physical laboratory located in New York.