“consim” - Ms Excel Based Student Friendly Simulator for Teaching Process Control Theory

This paper highlights the capabilities and significance of a new e-learning tool developed at Informatics and Process Control research group. The main objective is to facilitate the students in simulating and experimenting different subject concepts in a new e-learning environment. It also aims at teaching students to make use of simple, economical and easily accessible spreadsheet tool like MS Excel for solving variety of Chemical Engineering problems. “CONSIM” standing for CONtrol SIMulator is an interactive training package developed using unique features of MicroSoft Excel, a widely used MS Office application tool. The CONSIM is used to mimic the real time chemical engineering system using steady state and dynamic models and employ known numerical solution techniques already learnt by students. The problem under consideration is observed to be interesting and of significance from chemical engineering education point of view. Hence user friendly spread sheet tool ‘CONSIM’ can be successfully extended for simulating different design, optimization and analysis problems in chemical engineering education.