Artificial Intelligence… ‘What Will Its Contributions Be to Process Control’?

Abstract

The design of process control systems and the on-line control of chemical plants requires the systematic coordination of a multitude of tasks. In turn, each of these tasks has many facets requiring data, numerical algorithms, decision-making procedures, and human intervention to provide experiential knowledge. Artificial intelligence can play an important role in automating many of these tasks through the use of computers. The benefits can be: decreased cost and increased reliability. Its essential contribution is in providing the theoretical and technological foundations to enable the development of engineering solutions to process control problems. It does so by providing new models to represent knowledge about the world; structures to model and control the complexity of information flows; and procedures to automate planning, scheduling, diagnostic or design tasks. To concretely outline artificial intelligence's contributions to process control, this paper has focussed on two subjects: first, the development of an Intelligent Process Control System which can enhance automation in the control room, by adopting an integrated view of process control; second, the design of a software system, currently under development, to be used as an expert apprentice during the synthesis of control configurations within a plant-wide scope. The discussion of these two systems covers almost all issues where artificial intelligence can play a role, and indicates its synergistic complementarity with systems- and control-theoretical algorithmic procedures.