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The programming of a microcontroller as the laboratory component in process control for undergraduates in chemical engineering

Introduction

New funding generated by the College of Science and Engineering has financed enhancements of courses with computer technology. Here I describe briefly an enhancement, or perhaps a new direction is a more apt description, of Process Control (formerly ChE 4401, now ChE 4402); this is offered once a year in the spring semester. Typically, students take this course in their last semester; by this time, the novelty of life in the classroom is wearing a bit thin! For the most part, the course has roughly followed the first ten chapters of “Chemical Process Control”1.

It is now easy to obtain inexpensive and reliable microcontrollers. In the spring of 2002, our students2 first worked the Board of Education (BOE) from Parallax3; this is a convenient system with which to build circuits and to program the Basic Stamp, Parallax’s microcontroller. Of course, Parallax is not the sole source of microcontrollers; however, the depth and breadth of their educational material3 is particularly useful for those individuals who, like me, are new to the field. My research interests are not in process control and I took over the course after the departure of a specialist in the field. I have the single advantage of being an experimentalist. The preparation started in the summer of 2001; this exercise would not have been possible were it not for my single semester leave in the fall of 2001. During this time, I attended one of the regular two-day short courses organized for educators by Parallax4.

On the BOE, one assembles the desired circuit on a breadboard affixed to a printed circuit board; this contains the microcontroller, connections for power sources (wall transformer, or 9V battery) and input-output (I/O) connections to the microcontroller. The BOE provides a 5 VDC power source from which transducers may be run. For the purposes here, it is not necessary to design circuits; all the exercises were done with existing circuits with some minor modifications; these include adjustments to potentiometers and adding a switch. Our students meet the basics of electricity in freshman physics. Essentially, students have to be able to construct simple circuits from available diagrams; this requires the ability to locate pin 1, etc., on a chip, and recognize the polarity of an LED and an electrolytic capacitor. I encourage them to use a digital voltmeter (DVM) to check their interpretations of the color code on resistors! A separate switchable power strip was used to power the BOE through its wall transformer; it is necessary to switch off the power to the BOE before making any changes to the circuit.

Communication from the BOE to the outside world is made through a serial connection to a personal computer (PC). Programs are written in a special form of Basic, PBASIC; they are then compiled and downloaded to the microcontroller. Data can be transmitted back to the PC and viewed in debug window (debug command); they may be plotted and saved in a file using Stamp Plot Lite5, or captured directly into an Excel spreadsheet using an add-in program (StampDAQ

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Lodge, K. (2006, June), The Programming Of A Micro Controller As The Laboratory Component In Process Control For Undergraduates In Chemical Engineering Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--587