3Smart - Process automation challenge for students at the 26th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation

15-02-2018

The “Process automation challenge is one of the three industrial challenges organized for students within the 26th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation (MED 2018) to be held in Zadar, Croatia, from June 19 to 22, 2018.

The challenge focuses on the process of cooling a building that consists of three rooms with fan coils units. The building is connected to a smart electricity grid whereas the price of electricity changes and is known one day in advance. Fan coils are supplied with a cooling medium produced in the building’s chiller.

The goal is to design a controller for fan coils fans on-off state and the chiller setpoint temperature which will make the building smart, and to make it work on a programmable logic controller (PLC).

Tools used for controller design and simulation are Matlab/Simulink from MathWorks and TIA portal from Siemens.

The process automation challenge is organized in three stages with the following deadlines:

  1. First stage deadline: 19 March 2018 15:00 CEST;
  2. Second stage deadline: 30 April 2018 15:00 CEST;
  3. Finals within one day of the conference event.

The top 30 student teams after the first stage will advance to the second stage and will be given the necessary licensed tools from MathWorks and Siemens for controller design and testing for a target PLC.

The top three (3) students teams passing the second stage will compete at the conference for the challenge winner title. The winning team will be rewarded with industrial IoT devices.

The case study process is motivated by problems of integrated management of buildings and distribution grids tackled within the project Smart Building – Smart Grid – Smart City (acronym: 3Smart) funded through Interreg Danube Transnational Programme.

Programme co-funded by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA, ENI)