Use of a Web-Based Modeling Environment in the Education of Process Engineers

Abstract

The use of equation-oriented modeling and simulation software for the formulation and solution of model- based tasks has become an essential element in the education of process engineers. Computational exercises, offered normally as a supplement to traditional courses on process modeling, as well as special courses on process simulation, have proven to be an appropriate way of teaching the use of these modeling and simulation tools. The experience with such courses, however, shows that there is still a considerable room for improvement, when it comes to transferring the theoretical knowledge taught in the lecture into the computational exercises. When using conventional tools or modeling languages, actually unimportant software interface and syntax issues may play a central role, while fundamental aspects like a systematic model development and a degree of freedom analysis step into the background. In this contribution we report on the use of the web-based modeling environment MOSAIC (Kuntsche et al. 2011) in the education of process engineers. Compared to conventional modeling and simulation tools MOSAIC combines several novel concepts that promote the application of systematic model development, while simultaneously facilitating the learning of further standard tools and modeling languages. The possibility to define and manage models over the internet and the provided automatic code generation for any equation-oriented software tool present themselves as an improvement over the traditional teaching methods and is accepted very well by the students.