Diagnosing root causes of faults based on alarm flood classification using transfer entropy and multi-sensor fusion approaches

Process abnormalities can result in serious accidents that may lead to unexpected loss of life and property. Early fault detection and diagnosis are essential to prevent these accidents. In the efficient operation of industrial systems, alarm systems play a crucial role. Developing new sensors and alarm adjustment networks has increased the possibility of generating multiple alarms. The alarm flood is the most important type of this problem. In this study, a new algorithm is proposed to diagnose the root cause of the fault through the classification of alarm floods. The main novelty of this algorithm is to use transfer entropy as a criterion to detect the similarity between the alarm flood sequences. The other innovations include calculating transfer entropy between the process variable and the alarm data, multi-sensor information fusion for large-scale plants and simultaneous alarms, and proposing an online version of the algorithm for the early prediction of the type of fault occurring. Finally, the Tennessee Eastman Process system, as a simulator, and the Saveh rotary cement kiln, as a real industrial system, are applied to evaluate the proposed method.