Abstract

Many chemical processes require real-time control and supervision in order to operate them safely and profitably, while satisfying quality and environmental standards. As a means to comply with these requirements, it is common practice to use control software based on a proprietary operating system such as QNX, WxWorks, or MS Windows with real-time extensions. To our knowledge, the idea of using Real-Time Linux has not been embraced widely by research and industrial institutions in the area of Chemical Engineering. Nevertheless, recent application reports from other industrial fields indicate that several variants of the Linux operating system, that enable it to be real-time, are an attractive and inexpensive alternative to the commercial software. In fact, several implementations of open source data acquisition and control software, and real-time simulation environment have been developed recently. Moreover, the apparent trend for the number of such applications is to increase. We describe our experience at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Coimbra, with two pilot plants that are under control of a system based on real-time Linux. One of them is a completed project and the other is under development. The experimental set-ups closely resemble industrial equipment and function in similar operating conditions. We hope that this successful application will encourage further deployment of real-time Linux in the Chemical Engineering research and industry.

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