SBIR Phase I: Plant Control - A water engineering simulation and web-accessible water treatment plant for engineering, controls, automation, and data visualization STEM education

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括水工程流程的教育和在先进技术、经济和劳动力中取得成功的培训。工厂控制将教授学生向学校和家庭提供安全饮用水的系统，同时以吸引人的形式应用化学和工程概念。学生在高中阶段接触工程与在大学中选择STEM专业相关。该产品将向学生介绍包括土木、电气、机械、生物和材料在内的广泛学科，以促进学生选择工程专业。密歇根州弗林特清洁饮用水的中断突显了安全饮用水的关键重要性，以及老化的公用事业基础设施带来的技术障碍。本产品中介绍的水质STEM概念对于投票人群做出与人口增长和老化的公用事业基础设施相关的地方和联邦决策至关重要。高中STEM教室是学生的创新中心。该产品将为学生提供一个沙盒工具来开发他们自己的控制和数据采集，并培训他们在控制和数据采集行业中广泛使用的软件。拟议的项目将开发一个模拟和远程工厂模型，旨在让学生参与到新的环境中，并补充K-12环境中的STEM工程课程。研究的目标是了解模拟学习工具对STEM教育的影响，开发用于教育和劳动力培训目的的模拟器，并开发编程工具，使学生和制造商能够应用目前市场上缺乏的控制和数据采集系统。模拟开发的技术障碍包括在学生定义的各种配置、设备和过滤介质中进行流动建模。本项目开发的模拟将进一步应用于水和废水市场，以培训工厂操作员适应标准和紧急工厂运行条件。该项目的可通过网络访问的远程工厂模型组件要求全国用户连接到远程工厂并保护物理工厂设备。用于工厂控制的开发平台将提供给学生进行修改，并在自己的项目中使用。学生版将需要目前可用的专业平台的有限和简化版本。学生版的开发将需要重新配置平台和修改用户功能。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project includes education of water engineering processes and training for success in the advanced technology economy and workforce. Plant Control will teach students the system that supplies safe drinking water to their schools and homes while applying chemistry and engineering concepts in an engaging format. Student exposure to engineering in high school is correlated to choice of STEM majors in college. The product will introduce students to a wide range of disciplines including civil, electrical, mechanical, biological, and materials to promote student choice of engineering majors. The disruption of clean drinking water in Flint, MI highlights the critical importance of safe drinking water and technical hurdles that an aging utility infrastructure presents. Water quality STEM concepts presented in this product are essential for a voting population to make local and federal decisions related to population growth and aging utility infrastructure. High School STEM classrooms are centers of innovation for students. This product will provide the students a sand-box tool to develop their own control and data acquisition as well as train them in software that is widely used in the controls and data acquisition industry.The proposed project will develop a simulation and remote plant model intended to engage students in a new context and compliment STEM engineering curriculum in K-12 environments. The goals of the research are to understand the effect of simulation learning tools on STEM education, to develop a simulator for educational and workforce training purposes, and to develop a programming tool to enable student and maker applications of control and data acquisition systems that is currently lacking in that market. Simulation development technical hurdles include flow modeling in a wide-range of student defined configurations, equipment and filtration media. The simulation developed in this project will be further applied in the water and wastewater market to train plant operators for standard and emergency plant operation conditions. The web-accessible remote plant model component of the project requires connectivity of nationwide users to the remote plant and protection of the physical plant equipment. The development platform used for control of the plant will be available to the students for modification and use in their own projects. The student-version will require a limited and simplified version of the professional platform currently available. Development of the student version will require platform reconfiguration and user capability modification.