Modelling and simulation of the diffusion section of a beet sugar process for a plant operator training simulator

Carrying out a dynamic simulation to replace a real plant in a simulator for training operators of control room is a time-consuming task due to the simulation complexity. The simulation program must mimic the real plant behavior and allow simulating malfunctions, running in real time and interchanging data with other modules. In the proposed methodology the modeling task is tackled using an OOML (Object Oriented Modeling Language) named EcosimPro and the communication interface of the simulation program is made using the OPC (OLE for Process Control) standard. The paper shows the experience of the authors in applying this strategy to develop a RT and OPC-based simulation of the diffusion section of a beet sugar factory.