flowrate control

[buq]

Hello everyone,

For our new experiments involving a distillation section, we need to control simultaneously two liquid flowrates and a heating rate (controllable by voltage). The two flowrates exponentially decrease at different values, but at the same speed, from about 10ml/min to 2ml/min (we need actually to keep the ratio of the two flowrates constant). The liquid in question is just propanol, hexane type of organic liquid.
Could anyone tell me whether LabView is capable of doing this? and if yes, what other hardwares do we need? (we are thinking about getting the liquid pumps from Cole-Parmer).
Thanks a lot!
Reagrds,

Buq

[Matt_K]

LabVIEW could definitely help you out with this application. Depending on how fast and deterministic your control loop needs to be will determine which route you will want to take. If your loop rate is slow (say 1 min) and it doesn't matter if the loop really takes 59 or 61 seconds, regular LabVIEW would do the trick for you. LabVIEW interfaces nicely with NI DAQ boards so you could use those for reading and writing the voltages. Picking the best DAQ board for you will depend on what precision, speed, and budget you have in mind. Once you know these things, you might post to the DAQ area for more advice.

If you need very deterministic loop rates, you might want to check out LabVIEW real time. You can find more information about this subject at the follo
wing page: http://www.ni.com/support/labview/real-time/faq.htm