Connecting and teaching students via Web service for an online laboratory

Abstract

The I-Lab heat exchanger is a remotely controlled heat exchanger experiment that has been used on the Internet by students in a variety of chemical engineering courses. The hardware consists of a general service unit, custom designed and fabricated (HT-30XC, Armfield, Ltd., England), on which is mounted a heat exchanger (flat plate, shell-and-tube, or double pipe). Both fluid flowrates, their direction (cocurrent or countercurrent), and the inlet hot temperature are monitored and are under the control of the students. Monitoring and control is carried out with a computer/web server using LabVIEW 6.1 software (National Instruments, USA). Data is published to web-accessible LabVIEW graphical user interfaces (GUI) or via a DataSocket server to a Java2 GUI. A database (Microsoft SQL) and ASP.NET web forms are used for registering, authentication, and scheduling. The database is also used for collaboration management software (Java2). Student response has been favorable in general, and students appreciate the ability to take data from real equipment, especially in engineering science courses that otherwise contain no laboratory component.