(145d) A Simple Setup for Experiments in Reactor Dynamics, Control and Transport Phenomena

In this paper, a simple experimental setup is described that can be used in multiple courses in the undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum. The motivation for developing this setup comes from the high cost of purchasing ?canned? experiments that are suitable for the undergraduate curriculum. The experiment consists of a glass reactor with a cooling coil made of copper tubing. The cooling coil can be connected to either air or water. The flow rate of fluid in the coil is adjusted via an electronic control valve. LABVIEW software is used to acquire thermocouple measurements and control the valve actuation. The LABVIEW process controls toolbox is used, which gives a wide variety of PID controller configurations and options. This allows students to experiment with different control configurations and PID settings, while monitoring the response of the reactor temperature. The following experiments can be conducted in this simple apparatus:

1. Implementation of the PID controller to maintain a desired set-point temperature in the reactor.

2. Calculation and comparison of heat transfer coefficients when the fluid in the cooling coil is water or air.

3. Experimental simulation of various batch reactor dynamic conditions, such as reactor start-up.

4. Comparison of flow rates for air and water, and estimation of the pressure drop across a length of coiled copper piping.

This experimental setup costs less than $1000 to build and operate (not including the cost of the computer and LABVIEW). We will describe our experience in using this setup in the process control class and the heat transfer class. Possible extensions of these experiments to the reaction engineering class as well as the fluids class will be discussed.