Utilization of Additional Equipment Information for Drift Diagnosis in Chemical Plants

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Predictive maintenance is a promising approach to increase safety and productivity in chemical plants. One notoriously difficult problem in predictive maintenance are hard to predetermine, non-deterministic changes such as drifts. The term "drift" can be found with different definitions in this context. Therefore, it is defined here as changes in variables and parameters that occur orders of magnitude slower than the nominal process dynamics and are not directly measurable. Previous research resulted in a hybrid method that detects and diagnoses drifts from two sources: process and equipment. This method combines model-based and statistical approaches and additional information from the equipment, such as measurement gain or power consumption, is envisioned to reduce uncertainty about the drift cause [1]. First case studies revealed significant problems regarding economically viable integration of additional information. These problems arise due to the amount of information in scenarios with multiple devices, making analysis costly and time-consuming. For solving these problems, an automated evaluation of the information is introduced. It analyzes which additional equipment information is most relevant to distinguish between different drifts, based on sensitivity analyses. Additionally, a drift index - a unique mathematical label for drifts - is defined. The extended method is then successfully applied to a scenario closer to the reality in chemical plants with multiple adjacent devices. It is shown that the additional information is evaluated automatically and drifts are diagnosed more efficiently than in the previous method.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 36th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE 36)
PublisherPSE Press
Pages2527-2533
Number of pages7
ISBN (electronic)978-1-7779403-5-5
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesSystems and Control Transactions
Volume5
ISSN2818-4734

Conference

Title36th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering
SubtitleResilient Sustainability through CAPE
Abbreviated titleESCAPE 36
Conference number36
Duration21 - 24 June 2026
Website
LocationUniversity of Sheffield
CitySheffield
CountryUnited Kingdom

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0001-5165-4459/work/219266831
Mendeley c1c00f3d-7ba5-3ae6-9462-154df955c856

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

Subject groups, research areas, subject areas according to Destatis