A Method for Generation and Check of Alarm Configurations Using Cause-Effect Matrices for Plant Alarm System Design

Abstract

AbstractAn alarm system must provide useful information to operators as the third layer of an independent protection layer when a chemical plant is at abnormal situation. Therefore, a design method of a plant alarm system is important for plant safety. Because the plant is maintained in the plant lifecycle, the alarm system for the plant should be properly managed through the plant lifecycle. To manage changes, the design rationales of the alarm system should be explained explicitly. This paper investigates a logical and systematic alarm system design method that explicitly explains the design rationales from know-why information for proper management of changes through the plant lifecycle. In this paper, we propose a method for generation and check of alarm configurations using cause-effect matrices for plant alarm system design. The matrices are based on a cause-effect model and used for generation and check of alarm configurations.KeywordsPlant alarm system designCause-effect matricesAlarm management