A Lab Pipeline System for Teaching Control and Supervision Systems

Pipeline systems (PS) are considered the most efficient means of transporting fluids worldwide. These systems transport fluids from extraction areas to processing plants and/or consumption sites, in this context they have reached a high level of importance for the well-being of society. Therefore, it is crucial for society that PS operate properly, however this demand could become difficult to meet due to breakdowns such leakage and component fault. In this way, to ensure smooth transport of fluids, control and supervision systems are implemented along the PS. Last decades, to improve the safety of PS, supervision systems are complemented with fault detection and isolation (FDI) tools. This paper presents a laboratory-scale pipeline system (LPS) for teaching control and supervision systems. Thus, this LPS is suitable for learning modeling from physical and experimental data, control system design and FDI algorithm design, and solution testing. The use of the LPS in teaching is illustrated through a lab session on control system design based on process identification. Likewise, a teaching procedure for the design of a leak detection and localization algorithm followed by its testing in the LPS is shown.