(28b) Virtual Reality Dynamic Simulators in the Chemical Engineering Curriculum

Seasoned chemical engineering designers agree that it is necessary to study and understand existing processes before embarking on a new design. Where possible, they inspect the equipment in the field, talk to operators, examine operating data, and crawl through equipment during turnarounds. However, companies cannot generally allow students to gain close access to process plant equipment or operators. Relevant operational experience must therefore be transmitted through experienced design instructors. Even with experienced instructors, a gap exists between the process design created in the classroom and the physical plant that is actually built. Computer-based simulations can help to fill this gap. This presentation focuses on virtual 3D plant simulation programs that enable students to experiment and learn about a process, something that is not feasible in an actual plant. Through various exercises and practice, students obtain a high degree of operational familiarity with working processes, which gives them some of the valuable perspective needed for process design. The specific software tools that we are using include individual units such as pumps, heat exchangers, reactors, and distillation columns. As student expertise increases, they are exposed to more complicated processes, including fluid catalytic cracking and atmospheric crude units. Students are presented with various scenarios in which they are assessed based on their responses. For example, students are asked to execute a cold start-up of a commercial process. This is a complicated operation involving potentially numerous pitfalls. As another type of example, students are presented with faults or equipment failures that result in abnormal behaviors in the plant and which require corrective actions. All student actions during the exercises are recorded and assessed with rapid feedback given to the students. All of the processes are accompanied by a "virtual reality" outside operator views in which the students locate and monitor the various units and instruments in the process. This presentation will focus on our classroom methods and preliminary feedback from the students.