LAUSR

This paper describes Process Simulation and Control (PSIC), a user‐friendly Excel add‐in application, for studying process dynamics and designing simple control systems, through modeling and simulation in the time domain. It is an interactive tool for education, which utilizes a well‐known spreadsheet environment. It has been designed to help bachelor students of Chemistry understand the behavior of basic chemical engineering systems and basic principles of feedback control, without the need to program in Visual Basic for Applications or to understand Laplace transformation. PSIC allows students to build dynamic simulation models of liquid storage systems, heat or mass transfer processes, chemical and biochemical reactors, and many more systems. PSIC can simulate systems consisting of up to 10 ordinary differential equations of the first order, with up to 25 quantities. Optionally, simulation models can be connected to a feedback proportional–integral–derivative controller into a configurable regulatory loop. The use of PSIC is illustrated in the simulation and control of an electrically heated water heater.