Analysis of plant-wide disturbances using conditional entropy

Plant-wide disturbances in chemical plants have an impact on product quality and running costs, thus there is a need for automated diagnosis of the root cause. This short paper reports work in progress and preliminary results from a novel signal processing application using conditional entropy. It analyses measurements from normal process operations in a chemical plant to determine cause and effect relationships. The method suggests which measurement is the root cause of a plant-wide disturbance and, additionally, maps the physical structure of the plant.