Development and Application of a Data-Driven System for Sensor Fault Diagnosis in an Oil Processing Plant

Abstract

Predictive analytics is usually cited as one of the most important pillars of the digital transformation. For the oil industry, specifically, it is a common belief that issues like integrity and maintenance could benefit from predictive analytics. This paper presents the development and the application of a process-monitoring tool in a real process facility. The PMA (Predictive Maintenance Application) system is a data-driven application that uses a multivariate analysis in order to predict the system behavior. Results show that the use of a multivariate approach for process monitoring could not only detect an early failure at a metering system days before the operation crew, but could also successfully identify, among hundreds of variables, the root cause of the abnormal situation. By applying such an approach, a better performance of the monitored equipment is expected, decreasing its downtime.