AN EDUCATIONAL PLANT BASED ON THE QUADRUPLE-TANK PROCESS

This paper presents an experimental tank system developed at the University of Seville for process control education. This plant is based on the well known quadruple-tank process and some modifications have been done in order to obtain a wide range of applications. The quadruple tank process is a multivariable laboratory plant of interconnected tanks that can be easily configured to exhibit the effect of multivariable zero (minimum and non-minimum phase) on the system behavior, as well as the effect of non linear dynamics, saturation, constraints, etc.In the real plant implementation, the original structure of the process has been modified to offer a wide variety of uses for both educational and research purposes. Thus, different plants can be configured such as one single tank, two or three cascaded tanks, a mixture process and hybrid dynamics. Moreover the dynamics parameters of each tank can be set up by tuning the cross-section of the outlet hole of the tank. Furthermore, the real plant has been implemented using industrial instrumentation and a PLC for the low level control. Supervision and control of the plant is carried out in a computer by means of OPC (Ole for Process Control) which allows one to connect the plant with a wide range of control programs such as LabView, Matlab or industrial SCADA.