AN OBJECT-ORIENTED EXPERT SYSTEM FOR TROUBLESHOOTING REFINERY DISTILLATION COLUMNS

An object-oriented prototype expert system ORDEES for off-line trouble-shooting of refinery distillation columns is developed. It is found that highly modular knowledge base can be designed, and different types of data (e.g., graphs, numberical data, and algorithms) may be manipulated, by using object-oriented knowledge representation. In addition, a method termed Object-Oriented Multifunction Switcher is proposed for building multifunction expert systems. The results of the study are expected to be useful for designing multifunction expert systems for complex petroleum refining and petro-chemical processes with many kinds of equipment.