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RESEARCH PRODUCT

A Knowledge-Based System for the Automatic Generation of Plant Shutdown and Startup Schedules

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Abstract When the shutdown of a plant, or part of it, has been decided as consequence of a major fault, the generation of a safe shutdown schedule may be, for large and complex plants, a very difficult and delicate task. The same problem may be found when the plant must be restarted after the fault has been repaired, for the generation of a start-up schedule. The use of a knowledge-based system appears to be a suitable answer to this problem, allowing a high level of safety and a very fast generation process. The paper examines the process knowledge that needs to be included in such a knowledge-based system and proposes some knowledge representation forms that appear suitable for the task to be performed.