Ontology for industrial petrochemical processes: Case study of a DEA process

In the last decades, the oil, gas and petrochemical industries have registered a series of huge accidents. Information flow can be an important tool to minimize hazards to health and environment. This paper proposes the use of the ontology concept as a tool to improve the knowledge management in a refinery, through the representation of a DEA plant, mixing many pieces of information associated with its descriptive documentation and also given by a specialist in operation of that plant. This kind of application is challenging due to the complexity of applying knowledge about Semantic Web to a petrochemical process. The created ontology can be applied as one of the elements to develop tools to navigate through the plant, simulate its behavior, and diagnose faults, among other possibilities.