Intelligent systems for HAZOP analysis of complex process plants

Process safety, occupational health and environmental issues are ever incre asing in importance in response to heightening public concerns and the resu ltant tightening of regulations. The process industries are addressing thes e concerns with a systematic and thorough process hazards analysis (PHA) of their new, as well as existing facilities. Given the enormous amounts of t ime, effort and money involved in performing the PHA reviews, there exists considerable incentive for automating the process hazards analysis of chemi cal process plants. In this paper, we review the progress in this area over the past few years. We also discuss the progress that has been made in our laboratory on the industrial application of intelligent systems for operat ing procedure synthesis and HAZOP analysis. Recent advances in this area ha ve promising implications for process hazards analysis, inherently safer de sign, operator training and real-time fault diagnosis. (C) 2000 Published b y Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.