Expert systems: Application for process control (Abstract)

Expert systems technology has opened new doors to process control applications by providing new capability and flexibility for controlling processes. It offers the opportunity to capture, to retain and to utilize the invaluable process expertise that has accumulated over years of plant engineering and process operation. Modern plants possess high degrees of instrumentation which return vast amounts of data to the operator control room. In controlling the plant the operator is usually assisted by a computer which makes decisions by applying available data to rigidly constructed algorithms. Often situations arise which require the use of knowledge gained through experience with the process; this involves the extraction of data which is pertinent to the situations at hand, the filtering of enormous amounts of signals and the use of qualitative information in decision making. Traditional control systems offer only limited means of addressing these situations and are inflexible in the application of process ‘know-how’. Above all they are incapable of explaining how their control decisions were made and are difficult to modify.