Educational Simulators for Industrial Process Control - Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Application - page 155

We consider that the program is user-friendly, few hardware and software re-
sources are required and the functionality, the level of detail and the GUI are adapted
to the industrial environment and the learning requirements for control process engi-
neers. Moreover, it has been validated by experts with industrial skills. So, it's used
successfully in the “Master in instrumentation and process control ISA-REPSOL”.
Finally, to make the simulation based learning tool for control engineers a diverse
set of programs and EcosimPro libraries have been developed:
• Two complete EcosimPro model libraries of process unit and control elements.

They can be used to design and test different control structures to production
process.

• EDUSCA: a SCADA and its setting tool. EDUSCA can be used for different pur-

poses to the outlined in this paper. It can access to any OPC server and, conse-
quently, it can be used to supervise laboratory plants or any OPC server simulator.

• CreaOPC, to generate OPC server simulation programs from the EcosimPro simu-

lation models. So, the OPC server simulators can be connected to any OPC client,
for instance any industrial SCADA.
Additionally, as future work, new modules can be added to the library, for instance a
multivariable predictive control module. Other possible development and research
line is to follow up EDUSCA to support the web based learning.

Acknowledgements. The authors want to express their gratitude to the ISE (Instituto
Superior de la Energía, Fundación Respsol-YPF) and to the ISA (International Socie-
ty of Automation) Spanish Section for the financial and technical support.

References

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