Conceptual Design of a Thermal Process Plant Weblab

Abstract

Weblabs, or remote experimentation laboratories, make possible carrying out real-time experiments through the internet by using integrated laboratorial systems, software, hardware and multimedia resources, having important applications in engineering education and research teams cooperation. This paper presents the conceptual design of a Weblab for a thermal process plant, based on the systematic model for planning and development of Weblabs. Its approach comprises three layers (physical system, hardware and software), being prescribed the following steps: definition of requirements; system technical specification; conceptual synthesis; analysis, simulation and dimensioning; detailing and documentation; integration and start up test. The users (qualitative) and project (technical, quantitative) requirements have been compiled in a previous work through the application of the House of Quality matrix from the QFD method. The functional structure, the morphological chart and the use of Pugh's method to select the best design solution, as well as a description of the developed conceptual solution, are presented. The conceptual solution includes the thermal process plant remote configuration to allow the variation of the experimental setup parameters, offering three variants of control engineering exercises. The presented results provide the basis for the next stage of the Weblab development.