BR-PlantExpert: A rule-based expert system for operation support in industrial processes

This paper presents a tool that integrates techniques and features to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the diagnosis and its consequent decision action in industrial processes. The present tool is based on a rule-based expert system that can process online data of process variables, alarms and events for operation support. The proposed system, called BR-PlantExpert, is designed to act as a support operation screen, providing the operator with additional information that may be considered important in critical situations. Despite its wide range of possible applications, this paper focuses only in the context of real-time filtering of alarms during the operation.