(247g) Collaborative Education Across the Curriculum Using Cogeneration System

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) or cogeneration, is an efficient way of generating power and thermal energy from a single fuel source, which greatly increases the facility's operational efficiency and decreases the energy costs. Cogeneration, is critical to the economic viability of many industries, including fuels, chemicals, plastics, paper, and ferrous and nonferrous metals. CHP systems provide an excellent platform for both ChE and ME students to study thermodynamics, certain unit operations and process design principles, optimization, data reconciliation, and emissions control. Even better, many Universities have ready (albeit remote) access to such a system on their own campus. At LSU, we are opening our newer (commissioned 2005, 20 MW, $20 MM) cogeneration system to the world of engineering education through real-time data delivery using formats which can communicate with virtually any control/data acquisition system and then broadcast compressed data via the net. Experimental We purchased OSISoft PI® software to interface to and collect data from various control systems (JCI Metasys, ABB Symphony) of the 20 MW LSU Cogeneration Facility. Extracted data are then archived by the PI Server and linked to the web using a web server running PI's RtWebParts software. RtWebParts allows users to create, customize and deploy continuously updated views (e.g., Fig.1 showing the turbine section of the LSU Cogeneration System) of PI and non-PI data using a web browser. RtWebParts provides data in time series display, calculated data and contextual data. Students can access the data from the web as displays of individual units of the cogeneration system, or trends of important tags which they can create themselves. Users can view these in Microsoft Excel. Therefore access to real-time data from our cogeneration system can be broadcast to students worldwide. Some of the learning modules based on this technology are listed below. These modules have already been tested in 6 different classes within Chemical Engineering ? Junior and Senior labs, Numerical Methods, Simulation and Optimization, Unit Operations and Process Design. 1. Data Reconciliation / Gross Error Detection ? Students use real-time data from the cogen system to illustrate the difficulties in closing material and energy balances. 2. Energy Dispatching / On-line Optimization - Students fit data from the cogeneration system and then develop a plan to reduce energy costs. 3. Interface Construction for Process Control ? Students are provided with a list of all available tags and are asked to create an operator-friendly interface using the tags important in control of the process.