Conceptual design of a thermal process plant Weblab

This paper presents the conceptual design of a remote experimentation laboratory -a Weblab - for a thermal process plant, based on a systematic model for its planning and development. The adopted 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. 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.