Causal Plot: Causal-Based Fault Diagnosis Method Based on Causal Analysis

Fault diagnosis is crucial for realizing safe process operation when a fault occurs. Multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) has widely been adopted for fault detection in real processes, and contribution plots based on MSPC are a well-known fault diagnosis method, but it does not always correctly diagnose the causes of faults. This study proposes a new fault diagnosis method based on the causality between process variables and a monitored index for fault detection, which is referred to as a causal plot. The proposed causal plot utilizes a linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM), which is a data-driven causal inference algorithm. LiNGAM estimates a causal structure only from data. In the proposed causal plot, the causality of a monitored index of fault detection methods, in addition to process variables, is estimated with LiNGAM when a fault is detected with the monitored index. The process variables having significant causal relationships with the monitored indexes are identified as causes of faults. In this study, the proposed causal plot was applied to fault diagnosis problems of a vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) manufacturing process. The application results showed that the proposed causal plot diagnosed appropriate causes of faults even when conventional contribution plots could not do the same. In addition, we discuss the effects of the presence of a recycle flow on fault diagnosis results based on the analysis result of the VAM process. The proposed causal plot contributes to realizing safe and efficient process operations.