(384a) A State-of-the-Art Pilot-Scale Distillation Column for the Unit Operations Laboratory at the University of Kansas

A new pilot-scale distillation column has been commissioned for the Unit Operation Laboratories at the University of Kansas (KU) and will begin official laboratory course operations in the Spring of 2023. The column is 6.3 in. diameter, nearly 20 ft. tall, made from stainless steel, and with a total of 20 conventional sieve trays. The addition of this equipment is the most recent step in a concerted effort to update, modernize, and improve all experiments with the goal of enhancing our students’ learning experience. The Unit Operations Laboratory course at the University of Kansas is designed as a two-part course taken during the Fall and Spring semesters of the senior year. The courses are titled Chemical Engineering Laboratory I and II for the Spring and Fall semesters, respectively. In the first course of the series, students cover experiments on the fundamentals of Chemical Engineering learned during their Junior year (Kinetics, Fluids, Thermodynamics). In the second laboratory course, students cover Unit Operations experiments such as absorption and distillation and other aspects of the senior curriculum such as process dynamics and control.

The new distillation column is part of the second laboratory in the course series and is replacing a previous bench scale glass distillation column used for many years. With the projected upgrades, the UOL facilities will have pilot and bench-scale equipment located in the laboratory’s high and low bay area, respectively. So far, 4 rack-mounted bench scale experiments have been commissioned and constructed in the low-bay area. These racks are built on wheels, so they are mobile. This feature allows rolling the experiments into the classroom where the students are taking the associated theory class to introduce the new experiment before beginning the lab their senior year. The distillation column is one of the pilot-scale experiments located in the high-bay area. This high bay has a dedicated control room from which the distillation column will be operated. The column is highly automated with variable frequency drive pumps and automatic control valves. The distillation column will be operated and controlled with a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) linked to a desktop computer running LabVIEW. The control room is furnished with industry-like console workstations and 27 inch dual monitor computers. Additionally, tablets are wirelessly connected to the PLC to operate the distillation column while doing walkthroughs in the high-bay area. Additional features include cameras installed on 5 different sight glasses to visually monitor the activity of the trays at different points in the column from the computer in the control room. Very few operational steps will require being physically present in the high bay so that the column can be operated remotely. In this presentation, details of the distillation column design, construction, and operation will be presented along with planned strategies to optimize the utilization of column features to enhance student learning.