1992 Volume 18 Issue 5 Pages 629-636
A recipe-driven autonomous distributed operation and management system for pipeless chemical batch plants was proposed. The process sequence with various characteristics of chemical plants is written in the form of a recipe that consists of several sub-parts describing each unit process. Each sub-recipe is allocated to a proper hardware unit during execution of a process in order to make the unit autonomous. Moreover, it is shown that the whole plant is appropriately operated only with local communication among the units concerned. And the instantiation of the recipe makes possible the generality of the recipe and the appropriate placing of knowledge and decision -making. Consequently, the operation and management system is realized not only with the advantage caused by the distribution, i.e., even load and the easiness of maintenance, but also with the consistency that is indispensable for chemical plants.
