An expert decision support system for monitoring and diagnosis of petroleum production and separation processes

Automation of operations of petroleum production and separation facilities are desirable because the plants are often located in remote areas difficult to access in the severe Prairie winters. This paper presents the development process of an expert decision support system for monitoring, control and diagnosis of a petroleum production and separation plant. Data from various components of the plant are automatically collected and transmitted to the decision support system for analysis. The system can monitor operations at the plant based on the input data, detect abnormalities in the data and suggest diagnostic actions to the operator. During development, the processes of knowledge acquisition and ontological engineering were emphasized, and the knowledge obtained provided the foundation for system development. Some preliminary evaluation of the system was conducted by experts and the results generated by the system found to be satisfactory. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.