Engineering professor develops novel technology

West Virginia University professor Richard Turton has developed a simulator that will help chemical engineering students learn their way around a power plant.

The Advanced Virtual Energy Simulation Training And Research Center, or AVESTAR, will allow students to navigate a power plant that uses clean coal technology using 3D glasses and a joy stick controller.

"The idea behind the center is to foster training, research and education activities in the area of advanced fossil energy power generation," Turton said, a professor in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources.

Turton said the major goal for the AVESTAR Center is to develop new courses centered on the simulator technology.

"The 3D tool will allow students to walk through the virtual plant and turn valves and start or stop equipment just as they would in the real plant," Turton said. "All these changes are captured by the simulator and are reflected in the results displayed on the control room screens."

Turton said the simulator is a joint effort by the National Energy Technology Center of the Department of Energy lead by multiple WVU researchers and other collaborators.

"The program is the result of a 3-5 year-long research effort focused on building a power plant simulator capable of accurately reflecting the operation of a full-scale power plant," he said.

Turton's efforts to better the education opportunities for chemical engineering students does not stop there.

"I have always strived to educate students to the best of my ability and to share with them the experiences that I have gained throughout my industrial and academic careers," he said. "I think that this is the most important contribution that a university professor can make."

Turton has been writing chemical engineering textbooks for years in an effort to broaden the academic resources in the field.

"When I started teaching the senior design course in the Department of Chemical Engineering, 25 years ago, I struggled to find a textbook that really covered the material that I thought was important for students to learn," he said.

Instead of teaching from a textbook that did not reflect what he wanted his students to learn, Turton began writing his own, called Analysis, Synthesis and Design of Chemical Processes.

"Although I took the lead role in organizing the textbook, it was a group of four faculty members at WVU that contributed to the first edition," he said. "I still teach the senior design course in chemical engineering and we are now working on the fourth edition of the book."

The book has since been a required text in more than 40 chemical engineering departments around the world.

"Obviously it is very gratifying when colleagues from other universities use your text book," he said. "It is also good to know that many chemical engineering students around the country know about West Virginia University because of our book."

As a result of his contributions to the University and academics in general, Turton was given the Russell and Ruth Bolton WVU Professorship for Outstanding Teaching.

"It is always nice to be recognized for your contributions , and this award is particularly satisfying as it comes towards the latter part of my academic career and caps a 25-year effort of developing and implementing novel educational material into the curriculum," Turton said.