Engineering and industrial software company Aveva announces the winners of its first ever competition for senior year chemical engineering students in North America. The competition, launched in December, involved 56 students from 20 universities in North America remotely using Aveva’s industrial simulation software platform, SimCentral, to solve a challenge: design, optimize and operate a process to produce dimethyl ether—a gas that can be used as automotive fuel—for electric power generation and in domestic applications such as heating and cooking.
Aveva created the challenge in collaboration with Dr. Richard Turton, author and industry expert in the field of chemical process simulation. Its purpose is to introduce students to new skills and techniques in preparation for careers that increasingly rely on Industry 4.0 and the use of modern applications for engineering process design, simulation and optimization. Students were encouraged to be as innovative and creative as possible in their approach.
The results, as judged by Aveva technical experts, are:
Advanced group
- First place and $3,000 cash prize – Team West Virginia University (Saeed Kuzmar, Ronald Alexander, Zachary Kilwein and Dennis Loevlie)
Beginners group
- First place and $3,000 cash prize – Ryan Muir of the University of Cincinnati
- Runner-up and $1,500 cash prize – Team 2 University of California, Riverside (Jason Kuo, Aaron Chi, Benjamin Rammelsberg and James de Graw)
“The winning entries are excellent examples of how simulation can be used for both conceptual process engineering and control system design,” says Cal Depew, SimCentral product director and competition judge. “The standard has been incredibly high across all the submissions, demonstrating what’s possible with SimCentral even in a relatively short space of time by students at the very beginning of their careers.”
For more information, visit: www.aveva.com
