Author(s)

M. L. Espasa, F. B. Gilbert & G. J. Colón

Abstract

One of the main challenges in the effort to diminish the risk of accidents in the chemical plants, is to provide to the workers a rigorous training on how to act in case of emergency. It is necessary to find tools to learn the knowledge on the units and power to verify the degree of assimilation of these knowledge. An effective way to obtain the preparation of the personnel is obtained by means of an application based on an expert system, able to generate multitude of simulated situations of emergency. In that context it is asked to the user on the suitable way of proceeding, the most urgent actions to take and the variables to consider. Testing its preparation and improving it if were necessary. The program also provides a detailed list of the actions that must do a user in a case of real emergency, but this information is available as advice and complement, the final decision is left to the worker, that is the reason for his/her good preparation. The described system has been put in practice successfully in a Spanish petroleum refinery. 1 Introduction Traditionally the responsibility to make the control of a chemical process, fell on the workers of the plants. With the years new platforms and more complex control programs have appeared, which make a totally automated control [1], relegating the functions of the worker to the simple supervision of the process. The worker only makes the manual control in the anomalous situations, for example at starting, shutdowns or situations of emergency.

Keywords