An Intelligent Monitoring System for a Crude Oil Distillation Column

This paper describes an intelligent monitoring system for a crude oil distillation column. It proposes the use of multiple sensors to create a systematic way of monitoring, refining and detecting faults and anomalies. There can be sensor redundancy in a refinery and this research uses that redundancy for a crude distillation column to provide enough data and information to apply systemic methods and thinking and to create an intelligent monitoring system. The system uses real-time data from combinations of sensors used to observe crude refining to provide new information that would not be available from individual sensors. As an example, some sensor combinations are described for surveillance, to eliminate anomalies, and to improve monitoring with some intelligence.