Fault data generation and analysis: Case study of a chemical process

Unwanted process shutdown is an important and challenging problem in petrochemical Industry. Incipient fault detection and diagnosis of a fault while the system is still operating not only avoids abnormal event progression, but also reduce productivity loss and hazards. In this paper, simulated version of Tennessee Eastman (TE) process, which is replica of real time process, is studied. There are 21 types of identified faults out of which two faults, ‘reactor cooling water valve sticking’, and ‘condenser cooling water valve sticking’, have been simulated using MATLAB. Dynamics of important process variables under faulty operation, obtained using simulated data, are presented and analyzed. A brief discussion on the need for a multivariate dimensionality reduction technique is also presented in this paper.