Recent Developments with an Immersive Learning Tool Using a Milk Powder Production Application
Alfred Herritsch, Ken R. Morison, Elin Abdul Rahim, Andreas Duenser, Brent Richmond Young, Conan J. Fee, James F. Winchester, Ian Cameron, Peter Alan Gostomski · Chemeca 2011: Engineering a Better World: Sydney Hilton Hotel, NSW, Australia, 18-21 September 2011 · 2011
An immersive virtual training environment is being developed for a skim milk powder production process. This work is similar to work presented at previous Chemeca meetings on immersive learning environments using a refinery and a methanol plant (Cameron et al., 2005, Shallcross et al., 2010). In the virtual environment, the user has the opportunity to explore the process from raw milk reception, through initial heat treatment and cream separation, followed by evaporation and spray drying. The educational tool is comprised of spherical photography, process flow diagrams (PFD), piping and instrumentation diagrams (P and ID), 3-D drawings and supplementary material (e.g. text, videos, simulation programs and images) integrated into an interactive software platform. Immersive environments such as this complement the student field trips, which are becoming increasingly difficult to arrange because of time or safety concerns. However, they go beyond simple photographs and integrate multiple representations of the process. The 3-D drawings are an important feature in this application compared to earlier developments, because the process is located indoors and distributed across multiple floors, which causes orientation problems for the user. Key process equipment is made interactive (e.g. hotspots) by linking to more detailed information. In addition, the added complexity of the P and ID due to the service lines (e.g. clean-in-place (CIP), vacuum, air, water) is addressed by making their visibility a user choice. This paper describes the virtual training environment for students and operators as well as navigation and orientation problems and solutions.