The instrumentation includes temperature sensors, two differential water pressure sensors, a mechanical level sensor (float switch) and an electronic level sensor (conductivity). It includes a variable volume process tank, a hot water tank with electric heater and indirect heating/cooling coil, a hot water pump, two non-dedicated pumps, three on/off solenoid valves and a proportioning valve. This allows the configuration to be quickly changed, offering a wide variety of different loops. The inlets and outlets of the various pumps, valves and tanks incorporate self-sealing quick release fittings.
The contains everything that is needed to perform a range of single-loop process control experiments in conjunction with a PC.
A pressure regulating valve with filter is also included to isolate the equipment from fluctuations in the water supply pressure. The flexible nature of the system also allows for a wide variety of different disturbances to be applied to the loops to allow the effectiveness of the control parameters to be compared. As all these disturbances are under software control, they can be repeated precisely during the optimisation process, thus allowing an excellent degree of fine-tuning to be implemented.
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