The facilities available to the PSE@Sydney include pilot-scale distillation column, chemical reactor, heat exchanger, crystalliser, bio-reactor and polymerisation reactor systems. These facilities are well instrumented and monitored/controlled using state-of-the-art equipment. A consortium of software and hardware companies, between them, made substantial contributions towards equipment, infrastructure and research support over the past decade. In a recent development, several of these pilot-plant facilities have been incorporated within an Internet based teaching and training initiative that aims to (eventually) make the entire PSE@Sydney laboratory available for distance education.

Facilities Network Structure

The process systems control facilities are a unique combination of state-of-the-art control equipment, software, pilot scale plants and information managements second to none. The control network forms the basis for seamless connectivity between control systems, relational databases (OPC, PI), simulation plus modelling software and pilot scale plants over a system network. The control architecture has, as its backbone, the departmental computer network, providing a flexible layer on which information is shared. In practice, this means that information may be used and refined using proprietary and third party software packages allowing for novel solution to control problem. Hybrid systems that incorporate propriety hardware and a number of third party software are currently being developed and trialed.