Case Study: The University of the Witwatersrand improves remote biofuel lab learning with MathWorks MATLAB and ThingSpeak

The University of the Witwatersrand - Customer Case Study

The University of the Witwatersrand sought a way to provide its engineering students with hands-on experience in process control using real-time data from a biofuel fermentation process. The challenge was to overcome the limitations of their physical lab space and provide remote access to all students, especially given the constraints of local power instability. Using MathWorks ThingSpeak, an IoT analytics platform accessed via the university's MATLAB Campus-Wide License, they created a solution to stream and visualize live data from the bioreactor.

MathWorks provided the solution through ThingSpeak, which aggregated sensor data from the lab equipment and made it accessible to students remotely via any web browser. This allowed over a hundred students to monitor experiments in real time, analyze the data in MATLAB, and complete assignments modeling the process. The results included positive student feedback, the fulfillment of key educational assessment criteria, and the successful demonstration of a scalable, low-cost alternative to expensive industrial SCADA systems. MathWorks' tools also enabled rapid prototyping for research and facilitated collaboration.

The University of the Witwatersrand

Antony Higginson

lecturer in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering