- Email: [email protected]
Government Joint Project for Control Education
Copyright !Cl IFAC Advances in Control Education. Tokyo. Japan. 1994
UNIVERSITYIINDUSTRY/GOVERNMENT JOINT PROJECT FOR CONTROL EDUCATION MING RAO· and HAIMING QIU Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department o/Chemical Engineering University 0/Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA T6G 206 -Authors to whom correspondence should be addres.sed
Abstract: A wUversity/industry/govc:m-ment joint education/research project on pulp and paper process control is carried out in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta. Pulp and paper industry needs high educated people. Universities should meet the needs of the industry. Government can support and join the project. Much effort has been made for the project, and it benefits both the industry and the university. University, industry and the government are satisfied by the result of the project. Keywords: Education; Pulp industty, Paper industty, Process control; Computer software.
2. PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY PROFILE IN ALBERTA
1. INTRODUCTION Modem industrial process engineers should be well educated to meet the needs of future industrial developments (Astrom, 1985). Process control is an application oriented field. However, our control education succeeds in teaching theoretical concepts and computer techniques in classrooms, but not in practical skills. Control education cannot be done only in the classroom by the university professors. The successful control education needs the participation of industry and government. Interaction and collaboration among industry, academia and government are important issues in control education we are facing today. To bridge the gaps between academia and industry, theory and application, financial requirement and offering, effort has been made in the industry/universityl government joint project in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alberta.
Pulp and paper industry plays a very important role in Canadian economic development. It is the largest manufacturing industry in Canada. Canada makes a lot of profits from the produced newsprint paper by means of high volume and low production cost. However, it faces international marketing competition that has pushed the industry towards higher quality pulp and paper products. The success of the competition greatly depends on the quality of the employees in the pulp and paper companies. Pulp and paper processes are very complicated, in which the advanced technology and operation experience are highly concentrated [ying, Rao and Sun, 1990]. The fundamental requirements of pulp and paper mills are: good product quality, low production cost, high productivity, efficient operation, saving energy, operation safety and equipment protection, environment protection, and utilizing the most advanced technology. All these fundamental requirements can be realized only by well-educated people.
In this article, a joint education/research program with Alberta pulp and paper industry and government is selected from among several our successful stories as an example, to demonstrate our efforts in achieving better control education results.
Alberta is one of the major pulp and paper production provinces in Canada. Seven pulp and paper plants exist, and more than 2 217
industry companies were hard to recruit graduates in the province.
million tons of pulp are produced per year in the province. However the employee's education level is low. These 7 pulp plants in Alberta have 3859 employees, among which there is no Ph.D. graduates and only less than 15 Master graduates. Also, not too many people (about 150) are with Bachelor degrees. The percentage of the post-secondary educated employees in the Alberta pulp and paper industry is less than 5%. The information reveals that the pulp and paper industry in Alberta needs more high quality educated people to meet the requirement of enhancing the pulp and paper product quality to face the international market competition.
3. JOINT PROJECTS IN PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY A new research and education project on pulp and paper industry has been carried out in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alberta since 1990, in order to improve Canadian competitiveness in selling value-added pulp and paper products in international marketplace. The objective of this project is to enhance the visibility of pulp and paper industry at the University of Alberta by introducing the fundamental understanding about pulp and paper industry to engineering students, as well as to establish a long term co-operation between the University and the pulp and paper industry in education, research and public service.
The situation in the other provinces in Canada is not much better than in Alberta. As a result, the pulp and paper industry in Canada has the difficulty in the competItIve marketplace, especially during the recession in the recent years . The University of Alberta is the second largest university in Canada. The faculty of engineering of the University of Alberta is the third largest engineering faculty in the country. In the North America, the University of Alberta is the only institute that provides the education degree program in process control. Currently, the Department of Chemical Engineering offers 5 process control courses for undergraduate students, and 6 process control courses for the graduate students. However, in the University of Alberta (the major university in the province), there is no a single course for the pulp and paper processes, and no a control course concerning pulp and paper application. Before 1990, there was no engineering research for the pulp and paper processes. Historically, most engineering graduates at University of Alberta joined petrochemical industry. They had very little knowledge about pulp and paper industry since the lack of such industrial profile. The students' impression about pulp and paper industry were: poor technology, remote location and polluted environment. The pulp and paper industry has to improve this image in order to keep national competition in recruiting potential employers from University of Alberta campus . The students majoring in chemical engineering or process control have little knowledge about the pulp and paper processes. As a result, they have no interest on it. Thus, historically, the pulp and paper
The project is supported by several pulp and paper companies: Weyerhaeuser Grande Prairie (procter & Gamble Cellulose), Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. at Peace River, and Slave lake Pulp Corporation. It is also supported by the University. It is a university/industry/government joint project. Government agencies, such as Canada-Alberta Partnership on Forestry not only gives the financial support to the students, but also has the matching fund program to support collaboration between industry and university. Many industrial companies support the joint projects with the universities by the financial and technical aids. The matching funds can be applied from the government. The efforts in this project include: 1. A process control software package PCET (process Control Engineering T eachware) has been developed. The functions of this package include time domain analysis (continuous and discrete), frequency domain analysis (Nyquist plot and Bode diagram), stability analysis, root locus, state space analysis. PlO controller design and tuning can be done by using software. The pulp and paper industry application case, a headbox level with inlet stock flow rate cascade control system, is progranuned in the package. This package has been successfully used in the process control courses (ChE 446 Process Dynamics 218
and Control, CbE 564 Process Control, CbE 548 Computer Applications in Process Control, CbE 562 Process Modeling and Simulation, CbE 540 Introduction to RealTime Computer Applications and 646 J"' _. __ . . . __CbE n _ ____ _ 'n
T"\.
r a"-'C;;;);)
VYUdUU\,.;)
Pulp and Paper Association, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association donated bursaries to the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory to praise and encourage us to work on the pulp and paper university/industry joint project.
_
4UU
,",vu,.... ",,,,,,
•
,~..,
Control) in the University. The new version of PCET is attached to the textbook Process Control En~ring [Rao and Qiu, 1993] that are widely used in control courses by chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering in Northern America.
7. Define graduate student thesis projects from the joint project. There are 3 Ph.D. students and 3 Master students working their thesis on the pulp and paper joint projects. Some parts of the project were carried out at the industrial plants to solve real industrial problems. They accomplished several projects on artificial intelligence (AI), advanced process control and their applications to pulp and paper processes, such as decoupling control for pulp machine headbox at Procter & Gamble Pulp Mill in Grande Prairie [Xia et al., 1993], Intelligent operation support system for batch digester at Fraser pulp mill [Rao and Corbin, 1993], knowledge based approach for pulp and paper process control system design [Rao et al., 1992]. Currently, there is a multidisciplinary research project on going. The main objective of this project is to develop an intelligent on-line monitoring and control system (lOMCS) for hardwood pulp process [Rao and Xia, 1994]. An interdisciplinary research team is established, which includes university students and staff, and the employees from pulp and paper industry with the financial aids from industry and provincial government. The students involved in the research projects have more chances to get familiar with the pulp and paper processes and process control systems. On the other hand, they showed their ability to the companies.
2. University professors visit the industry frequently to give the seminars or have a meeting with industrial employees. They introduce the newest technology, and bring the updated research results or proposals to the industry. 3. We invite industrial people to give seminars or lectures in the university to introduce the practical concepts and applications to the students. The staff as well as the students can learn the practical knowledge from the seminars or lectures. The government officers are also invited to give the seminars in the campus on the management or the industrial/university joint projects. 4. Companies provide summer jobs for the graduate students involved in this project. 5. We organize the students to visit industry and industrial research centers. The students can learn about industry and gain the interest in practical problems. The students may find the research projects in the visiting. Also it is helpful for the students to understand some processes and process control concepts.
8. Recruit the industry employees as graduate students. The students with rich practical knowledge can better understand the control concepts, and easier to apply control theory into industry. The joint project stimulates the industrial employees to re-enter the university to improve their knowledge. Several industrial employees have been recruited into Master or Ph.D. programs in process control in the Engineering, Department of Chemical University of Alberta. One of them was a Department Manager of the Process Information and Control in a pulp mill. In the past years, he has provided funding and technical aids to the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory and the University of Alberta. During the cooperative research and education activities with the laboratory, he got excited about academic career. With 15 year's
6. Give the chance to the students to attend industrial conference, such as Canadian Pulp and Paper Annual Meeting, and Pacific Coast & Western Branches Conference of Canadian Pulp and Paper Association. The industrial conferences are the excellent places to meet various industry people and to exchange knowledge. The students present their paper in the conferences and exchange information with the people from the industry. Also these chances stimulate the students to apply control theory into applications, and summarize the results into a paper. The attendance at the conferences also encourages the students to contribute to the project. At the Pacific Coast & Western Branches Conference of Canadian 219
field. In fact, the public image of pulp and paper industry in university campus is improving. More and more professors and students are intending to work with the pulp and paper industry.
industry experience at a pulp mill, he decided to join the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory to pursue his Ph.D. degree. He will study intelligence engineering technology in the Laboratory. Combining the most advanced knowledge with his profound experience, he will create a glorious career.
The students involved in the project have more chance to get a job in pulp and paper companies. Two Master students involved got the job offers even before they passed their thesis defense.
9. The first pulp and paper manufacturing course in the University of Alberta has been approved, and will be in the university's curriculum in the coming semester. This course is approved at the time a lot of courses are cut off due to the economic situation and big cut in education funding.
5. CONCLUSION The industry needs more high-educated people. The current situation shows that the education in the industry cannot meet the needs of the technology development and the requirement of competitive marketplace. The industry/university/government joint project on the pulp and paper industry in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Engineering, Department of Chemical University of Alberta has been successfully carrying out. This project benefits both the university and the industry.
10. A book based on our process control research for pulp and paper industry has been accomplished, which is titled "Modeling and advanced control for process industries application in paper-making process" [Rao et al., 1994]. This book introduces basic and advanced technologies, especially in advanced process control and intelligent control and their applications in the pulp and paper industry.
4. BENEFITS FOR UNIVERSITY AND INDUSTRY
6. REFERENCES AstrOm, K. J. (1985). "Process control - past, present and future," IEEE Control System Magazine,S, PP. 3-10. M . Rao and J. Corbin (1993) "Intelligent system for batch digester operation," Pulp and Paper Canada, vol. 94, 12, pp. 79-84. M . Rao and H. Qiu ( 1993). Process Control Engineering, Gordon and Breach Publishers, Inc., Langhome, PA. M. Rao and Q. Xia (1994) "Integrated distributed intelligent system for on-line monitoring and control of pulp process," Canadian Artificial Intelligence, 33, pp. 5-10. M. Rao, Y. Ying and Q. Xia (1994) Modeling and Advanced Control for Process Industries Application in Paper-Making Process, SpringerVelag, London. M. Rao, Y. Ying and Q. Wang (1992) "Integrated distributed intelligent system for process-control system design," Eng. Appl. of Artificial Intelligence,S, pp. 505-518. Q. Xia, M. Rao, Y. Sun and Y. Ying (1993) "A new technique for decoupling control", International Journal ofSystem Sciences, 24, 289-300. Y. Ying, M. Rao and Y. Sun (1990) "State disturbance composite observer for bilinear system," Proc. 1990 American Control Conference, pp. 19171921, San Diego, CA.
To report the achievement of the project, we successfully held a project review conference on June 24-25 with 87 representatives from industry, academia and government. The students involved in the project reported their achievements on pulp and paper process control and applications. The representatives from industry and government are satisfied with the project achievements. It is a common understanding that the project benefits both the industry and the university. The linkage between two sides encourages them to catch up with the newest technology. For examples, the companies now are more interested in artificial intelligence, intelligent control, neural networks and the integrated distributed intelligent systems, which are the frontier technology in the field. They said: these new technologies will be the keys to the next revolution in pulp mill operation. Through this project, professors and students in the university are encouraged to get involved with the pulp and paper industry, where they see so many opportunities in the 220
UNIVERSITYIINDUSTRY/GOVERNMENT JOINT PROJECT FOR CONTROL EDUCATION MING RAO· and HAIMING QIU Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department o/Chemical Engineering University 0/Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA T6G 206 -Authors to whom correspondence should be addres.sed
Abstract: A wUversity/industry/govc:m-ment joint education/research project on pulp and paper process control is carried out in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta. Pulp and paper industry needs high educated people. Universities should meet the needs of the industry. Government can support and join the project. Much effort has been made for the project, and it benefits both the industry and the university. University, industry and the government are satisfied by the result of the project. Keywords: Education; Pulp industty, Paper industty, Process control; Computer software.
2. PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY PROFILE IN ALBERTA
1. INTRODUCTION Modem industrial process engineers should be well educated to meet the needs of future industrial developments (Astrom, 1985). Process control is an application oriented field. However, our control education succeeds in teaching theoretical concepts and computer techniques in classrooms, but not in practical skills. Control education cannot be done only in the classroom by the university professors. The successful control education needs the participation of industry and government. Interaction and collaboration among industry, academia and government are important issues in control education we are facing today. To bridge the gaps between academia and industry, theory and application, financial requirement and offering, effort has been made in the industry/universityl government joint project in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alberta.
Pulp and paper industry plays a very important role in Canadian economic development. It is the largest manufacturing industry in Canada. Canada makes a lot of profits from the produced newsprint paper by means of high volume and low production cost. However, it faces international marketing competition that has pushed the industry towards higher quality pulp and paper products. The success of the competition greatly depends on the quality of the employees in the pulp and paper companies. Pulp and paper processes are very complicated, in which the advanced technology and operation experience are highly concentrated [ying, Rao and Sun, 1990]. The fundamental requirements of pulp and paper mills are: good product quality, low production cost, high productivity, efficient operation, saving energy, operation safety and equipment protection, environment protection, and utilizing the most advanced technology. All these fundamental requirements can be realized only by well-educated people.
In this article, a joint education/research program with Alberta pulp and paper industry and government is selected from among several our successful stories as an example, to demonstrate our efforts in achieving better control education results.
Alberta is one of the major pulp and paper production provinces in Canada. Seven pulp and paper plants exist, and more than 2 217
industry companies were hard to recruit graduates in the province.
million tons of pulp are produced per year in the province. However the employee's education level is low. These 7 pulp plants in Alberta have 3859 employees, among which there is no Ph.D. graduates and only less than 15 Master graduates. Also, not too many people (about 150) are with Bachelor degrees. The percentage of the post-secondary educated employees in the Alberta pulp and paper industry is less than 5%. The information reveals that the pulp and paper industry in Alberta needs more high quality educated people to meet the requirement of enhancing the pulp and paper product quality to face the international market competition.
3. JOINT PROJECTS IN PULP AND PAPER INDUSTRY A new research and education project on pulp and paper industry has been carried out in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alberta since 1990, in order to improve Canadian competitiveness in selling value-added pulp and paper products in international marketplace. The objective of this project is to enhance the visibility of pulp and paper industry at the University of Alberta by introducing the fundamental understanding about pulp and paper industry to engineering students, as well as to establish a long term co-operation between the University and the pulp and paper industry in education, research and public service.
The situation in the other provinces in Canada is not much better than in Alberta. As a result, the pulp and paper industry in Canada has the difficulty in the competItIve marketplace, especially during the recession in the recent years . The University of Alberta is the second largest university in Canada. The faculty of engineering of the University of Alberta is the third largest engineering faculty in the country. In the North America, the University of Alberta is the only institute that provides the education degree program in process control. Currently, the Department of Chemical Engineering offers 5 process control courses for undergraduate students, and 6 process control courses for the graduate students. However, in the University of Alberta (the major university in the province), there is no a single course for the pulp and paper processes, and no a control course concerning pulp and paper application. Before 1990, there was no engineering research for the pulp and paper processes. Historically, most engineering graduates at University of Alberta joined petrochemical industry. They had very little knowledge about pulp and paper industry since the lack of such industrial profile. The students' impression about pulp and paper industry were: poor technology, remote location and polluted environment. The pulp and paper industry has to improve this image in order to keep national competition in recruiting potential employers from University of Alberta campus . The students majoring in chemical engineering or process control have little knowledge about the pulp and paper processes. As a result, they have no interest on it. Thus, historically, the pulp and paper
The project is supported by several pulp and paper companies: Weyerhaeuser Grande Prairie (procter & Gamble Cellulose), Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. at Peace River, and Slave lake Pulp Corporation. It is also supported by the University. It is a university/industry/government joint project. Government agencies, such as Canada-Alberta Partnership on Forestry not only gives the financial support to the students, but also has the matching fund program to support collaboration between industry and university. Many industrial companies support the joint projects with the universities by the financial and technical aids. The matching funds can be applied from the government. The efforts in this project include: 1. A process control software package PCET (process Control Engineering T eachware) has been developed. The functions of this package include time domain analysis (continuous and discrete), frequency domain analysis (Nyquist plot and Bode diagram), stability analysis, root locus, state space analysis. PlO controller design and tuning can be done by using software. The pulp and paper industry application case, a headbox level with inlet stock flow rate cascade control system, is progranuned in the package. This package has been successfully used in the process control courses (ChE 446 Process Dynamics 218
and Control, CbE 564 Process Control, CbE 548 Computer Applications in Process Control, CbE 562 Process Modeling and Simulation, CbE 540 Introduction to RealTime Computer Applications and 646 J"' _. __ . . . __CbE n _ ____ _ 'n
T"\.
r a"-'C;;;);)
VYUdUU\,.;)
Pulp and Paper Association, the Canadian Pulp and Paper Association donated bursaries to the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory to praise and encourage us to work on the pulp and paper university/industry joint project.
_
4UU
,",vu,.... ",,,,,,
•
,~..,
Control) in the University. The new version of PCET is attached to the textbook Process Control En~ring [Rao and Qiu, 1993] that are widely used in control courses by chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering in Northern America.
7. Define graduate student thesis projects from the joint project. There are 3 Ph.D. students and 3 Master students working their thesis on the pulp and paper joint projects. Some parts of the project were carried out at the industrial plants to solve real industrial problems. They accomplished several projects on artificial intelligence (AI), advanced process control and their applications to pulp and paper processes, such as decoupling control for pulp machine headbox at Procter & Gamble Pulp Mill in Grande Prairie [Xia et al., 1993], Intelligent operation support system for batch digester at Fraser pulp mill [Rao and Corbin, 1993], knowledge based approach for pulp and paper process control system design [Rao et al., 1992]. Currently, there is a multidisciplinary research project on going. The main objective of this project is to develop an intelligent on-line monitoring and control system (lOMCS) for hardwood pulp process [Rao and Xia, 1994]. An interdisciplinary research team is established, which includes university students and staff, and the employees from pulp and paper industry with the financial aids from industry and provincial government. The students involved in the research projects have more chances to get familiar with the pulp and paper processes and process control systems. On the other hand, they showed their ability to the companies.
2. University professors visit the industry frequently to give the seminars or have a meeting with industrial employees. They introduce the newest technology, and bring the updated research results or proposals to the industry. 3. We invite industrial people to give seminars or lectures in the university to introduce the practical concepts and applications to the students. The staff as well as the students can learn the practical knowledge from the seminars or lectures. The government officers are also invited to give the seminars in the campus on the management or the industrial/university joint projects. 4. Companies provide summer jobs for the graduate students involved in this project. 5. We organize the students to visit industry and industrial research centers. The students can learn about industry and gain the interest in practical problems. The students may find the research projects in the visiting. Also it is helpful for the students to understand some processes and process control concepts.
8. Recruit the industry employees as graduate students. The students with rich practical knowledge can better understand the control concepts, and easier to apply control theory into industry. The joint project stimulates the industrial employees to re-enter the university to improve their knowledge. Several industrial employees have been recruited into Master or Ph.D. programs in process control in the Engineering, Department of Chemical University of Alberta. One of them was a Department Manager of the Process Information and Control in a pulp mill. In the past years, he has provided funding and technical aids to the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory and the University of Alberta. During the cooperative research and education activities with the laboratory, he got excited about academic career. With 15 year's
6. Give the chance to the students to attend industrial conference, such as Canadian Pulp and Paper Annual Meeting, and Pacific Coast & Western Branches Conference of Canadian Pulp and Paper Association. The industrial conferences are the excellent places to meet various industry people and to exchange knowledge. The students present their paper in the conferences and exchange information with the people from the industry. Also these chances stimulate the students to apply control theory into applications, and summarize the results into a paper. The attendance at the conferences also encourages the students to contribute to the project. At the Pacific Coast & Western Branches Conference of Canadian 219
field. In fact, the public image of pulp and paper industry in university campus is improving. More and more professors and students are intending to work with the pulp and paper industry.
industry experience at a pulp mill, he decided to join the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory to pursue his Ph.D. degree. He will study intelligence engineering technology in the Laboratory. Combining the most advanced knowledge with his profound experience, he will create a glorious career.
The students involved in the project have more chance to get a job in pulp and paper companies. Two Master students involved got the job offers even before they passed their thesis defense.
9. The first pulp and paper manufacturing course in the University of Alberta has been approved, and will be in the university's curriculum in the coming semester. This course is approved at the time a lot of courses are cut off due to the economic situation and big cut in education funding.
5. CONCLUSION The industry needs more high-educated people. The current situation shows that the education in the industry cannot meet the needs of the technology development and the requirement of competitive marketplace. The industry/university/government joint project on the pulp and paper industry in the Intelligence Engineering Laboratory, Engineering, Department of Chemical University of Alberta has been successfully carrying out. This project benefits both the university and the industry.
10. A book based on our process control research for pulp and paper industry has been accomplished, which is titled "Modeling and advanced control for process industries application in paper-making process" [Rao et al., 1994]. This book introduces basic and advanced technologies, especially in advanced process control and intelligent control and their applications in the pulp and paper industry.
4. BENEFITS FOR UNIVERSITY AND INDUSTRY
6. REFERENCES AstrOm, K. J. (1985). "Process control - past, present and future," IEEE Control System Magazine,S, PP. 3-10. M . Rao and J. Corbin (1993) "Intelligent system for batch digester operation," Pulp and Paper Canada, vol. 94, 12, pp. 79-84. M . Rao and H. Qiu ( 1993). Process Control Engineering, Gordon and Breach Publishers, Inc., Langhome, PA. M. Rao and Q. Xia (1994) "Integrated distributed intelligent system for on-line monitoring and control of pulp process," Canadian Artificial Intelligence, 33, pp. 5-10. M. Rao, Y. Ying and Q. Xia (1994) Modeling and Advanced Control for Process Industries Application in Paper-Making Process, SpringerVelag, London. M. Rao, Y. Ying and Q. Wang (1992) "Integrated distributed intelligent system for process-control system design," Eng. Appl. of Artificial Intelligence,S, pp. 505-518. Q. Xia, M. Rao, Y. Sun and Y. Ying (1993) "A new technique for decoupling control", International Journal ofSystem Sciences, 24, 289-300. Y. Ying, M. Rao and Y. Sun (1990) "State disturbance composite observer for bilinear system," Proc. 1990 American Control Conference, pp. 19171921, San Diego, CA.
To report the achievement of the project, we successfully held a project review conference on June 24-25 with 87 representatives from industry, academia and government. The students involved in the project reported their achievements on pulp and paper process control and applications. The representatives from industry and government are satisfied with the project achievements. It is a common understanding that the project benefits both the industry and the university. The linkage between two sides encourages them to catch up with the newest technology. For examples, the companies now are more interested in artificial intelligence, intelligent control, neural networks and the integrated distributed intelligent systems, which are the frontier technology in the field. They said: these new technologies will be the keys to the next revolution in pulp mill operation. Through this project, professors and students in the university are encouraged to get involved with the pulp and paper industry, where they see so many opportunities in the 220