Multivariate Statistical Process Monitoring and Control: Recent Developments and Applications to Chemical Industry

Multivariate statistical process monitoring and control (MSPM&C) methods for chemical process monitoring with statistical projection techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) are surveyed in this paper. The four-step procedure of performing MSPM&C for chemical process, modeling of processes, detecting abnormal events or faults, identifying the variable(s) responsible for the faults and diagnosing the source cause for the abnormal behavior, is analyzed. Several main research directions of MSPM&C reported in the literature are discussed, such as multi-way principal component analysis (MPCA) for batch process, statistical monitoring and control for nonlinear process, dynamic PCA and dynamic PLS, and on-line quality control by inferential models. Industrial applications of MSPM&C to several typical chemical processes, such as chemical reactor, distillation column, polymerization process, petroleum refinery units, are summarized. Finally, some concluding remarks and future considerations are made.

Investigation of Dynamic Multivariate Chemical Process Monitoring

Chemical process variables are always driven by random noise and disturbances. The closed-loop con-trol yields process measurements that are auto and cross correlated. The influence of auto and cross correlations on statistical process control (SPC) is investigated in detail by Monte Carlo experiments. It is revealed that in the sense of average performance, the false alarms rates (FAR) of principal component analysis (PCA), dynamic PCA are not affected by the time-series structures of process variables. Nevertheless, non-independent identical distribution will cause the actual FAR to deviate from its theoretic value apparently and result in unexpected consecutive false alarms for normal operating process. Dynamic PCA and ARMA-PCA are demonstrated to be inefficient to remove the influences of auto and cross correlations. Subspace identification-based PCA (SI-PCA) is proposed to improve the monitoring of dynamic processes. Through state space modeling, SI-PCA can remove the auto and cross corre-lations efficiently and avoid consecutive false alarms. Synthetic Monte Carlo experiments and the application in Tennessee Eastman challenge process illustrate the advantages of the proposed approach.

Machining Error Control by Integrating Multivariate Statistical Process Control and Stream of Variations Methodology

For aircraft manufacturing industries, the analyses and prediction of part machining error during machining process are very important to control and improve part machining quality. In order to effectively control machining error, the method of integrating multivariate statistical process control （MSPC） and stream of variations （SoV） is proposed. Firstly, machining error is modeled by multi-operation approaches for part machining process. SoV is adopted to establish the mathematic model of the relationship between the error of upstream operations and the error of downstream operations. Here error sources not only include the influence of upstream operations but also include many of other error sources. The standard model and the predicted model about SoV are built respectively by whether the operation is done or not to satisfy different requests during part machining process. Secondly, the method of one-step ahead forecast error （OSFE） is used to eliminate autocorrelativity of the sample data from the SoV model, and the T2 control chart in MSPC is built to realize machining error detection according to the data characteristics of the above error model, which can judge whether the operation is out of control or not. If it is, then feedback is sent to the operations. The error model is modified by adjusting the operation out of control, and continually it is used to monitor operations. Finally, a machining instance containing two operations demonstrates the effectiveness of the machining error control method presented in this paper.

Real-time monitoring and fault detection of pulsed-spray fluid-bed granulation using near-infrared spectroscopy and multivariate process trajectories

Pulsed spray is a useful tool forgranule size control in fluid bed granulation.To improve the quality control of pulsed-spray fluid bed granulation,a combination of in-line near-infrared(NIR)spectroscopy and p「incipal component analysis was used to develop multivariate statistical process control(MSPC)charts.Different types of MSPC charts were developed,including principal component score charts,Hotelling's T2 control charts,and distance to model X control charts,to monitor the batch evolution throughout the granulation process.Correlation optimized warping was used as an alignment method to deal with the time variation in batches caused by the granulation mechanism in MSPC modeling.The control charts developed in this study were validated on normal batches and tested on four batches that deviated from normal processing conditions to achieve real-time fault analysis.The results indicated that the NIR spectroscopy-based MSPC model included the variability in the sample set constituting the model and could withstand external variability.This research demonstrated the application of synchronized NIR spectra in conjunction w让h multivariate batch modeling as an attractive tool for process monitoring and a fault diagnosis method for effective process control in pulsed-spray fluid bed granulation.