Design of Integrated Fault Diagnostic System (FDS)

Early diagnosis of plant faults/deviations is a critical factor for optimized and safe plant operation. Although smart controllers and diagnosis systems are available and widely used in chemical plants, however, some faults couldn´t be detected. Major reason is the lack of learning techniques that can learn from operational running data and previous abnormal cases. In addition, operator and maintenance engineer opinions and observations are not well used, and useful diagnosis knowledge is ignored. Providing link between operation management, maintenance management and fault diagnostic and monitoring systems will enable closing such gap where diagnostic and monitoring results can be used more effectively for real time operation support, and optimized plant maintenance. In addition, operation and maintenance findings and discovered knowledge can be used effectively for plant condition monitoring. This research work presents the framework and mechanism for such integrated fault diagnostic system, which is called FDS. The proposed idea will support operation and maintenance planning as well as overall plant safety