Challenges in the industrial applications of fault diagnostic systems

Process fault diagnosis (PFD) involves interpreting the current status of t he plant given sensor readings and process knowledge. Early diagnosis of pr ocess faults while the plant is still operating in a controllable region ca n help avoid event progression and reduce the amount of productivity loss d uring an abnormal event. PFD forms the first step in abnormal situation man agement (ASM), which aims at timely detection, diagnosis and correction of abnormal conditions. However the problem of PFD is made considerably diffic ult by the scale and complexity of modern plants. We briefly outline the va rious challenges in the area of PFD and review the existing methods to tack le them. We argue that a hybrid blackboard-based framework utilizing collec tive problem solving is the most promising approach. The efforts of the ASM consortium in pursuing the implementation of the state-of-the-art technolo gies at plant sites are also described. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.