Commercialisation of novel knowledge-based computer tools for process plant design check and hazard identification
Submitting Institution
Loughborough UniversityUnit of Assessment
Computer Science and InformaticsSummary Impact Type
TechnologicalResearch Subject Area(s)
Mathematical Sciences: Applied Mathematics
Information and Computing Sciences: Information Systems
Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Summary of the impact
Loughborough University's (LU) research in the application of artificial
intelligence techniques to
enhance process safety since 1993 has resulted in novel computer tools
that generated the
following economic impacts through the creation of a University spinout
company, Hazid
Technologies Ltd, in 2002:
1) Raised over £1.3m shares capital from investors.
2) Developed research prototypes into state-of-the-art commercial tools
for improving process
plant safety.
3) Signed a global sales agreement with Intergraph Corporation in 2005.
4) Established a portfolio of major companies around the world as
clients.
5) Employs two executive directors, three software developers and three
chemical engineers.
Underpinning research
In the nuclear, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and other manufacturing
industries, process plant
safety relies heavily on engineers' ability to identify potential causes
in a plant that would lead to
hazardous consequences and to address the potential causes adequately in
an early stage to
prevent accidents. The widely used method for hazard identification in
these industries is HAZOP
(Hazard and Operability) Study, which is usually carried out during plant
design or modification.
This is a labour intensive manual procedure in which a team of engineers
study the process
system diagrams or Process & Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID) of
the plant, postulate possible
faults in each plant equipment item that could propagate through the plant
and result in a
hazardous or undesirable consequence in another item. The potential
hazards are noted and
action recommended to eliminate or mitigate the hazard and a report of all
the work is made. This
procedure, invented by ICI, has been used since the mid 1970's and no
effective software tool has
been developed, except data entry tools, to assist the HAZOP team with the
task of identifying
hazards. Novel ideas and innovative computer tools are required to improve
the efficiency and
consistency of HAZOP Studies and design checks and this was provided by
Loughborough
University from research through projects G3.1 to G3.4
listed in section 3.
The PI and CI of the project G3.1 were Dr Andrew Rushton and Prof
Paul Chung respectively. Both
were employed by LU throughout the EU grant from 1993 to 1996. Prof Paul
Chung was PI of the
project G3.2 and was employed by LU throughout the EPSRC grant
from 2001 to 2004. Prof Paul
Chung was the Supervisor of the projects G3.3 and G3.4 and
was employed by LU throughout the two
EPSRC EngD studentships from 2004 to 2008 and 2006 to 2010 respectively.
G3.1 investigated the automation of the time consuming HAZOP Study
by utilising the knowledge,
and emulating the reasoning, of process and safety engineers. P&IDs
are stored in a process-oriented,
computable format. Model-based plant equipment behaviour is applied to
emulate
engineers' reasoning about possible causes and how they propagate through
a plant resulting in
hazardous consequences. The research prototype HAZID, resulted
from G3.1 described in [3.1,
3.2], demonstrated that the intensely qualitative HAZOP Study could
be computerised to generate
the HAZOP results automatically in advance for the HAZOP team to discuss
at their HAZOP Study
meetings.
Projects G3.2 and G3.3 were carried out to extend the
ideas of automated hazard identification in
continuous plants to batch plants. The research extended the consideration
of hazards, due to
causes of deviation from steady state, to deviation due to operation
errors in batch mode. The
state-based approach is described in [3.3, 3.4].
Finally, investigation into automated design checks and automated
generation of SAFE charts was
carried out by project G3.4 and the results are reported in [3.5].
In addition to publishing the research findings, and giving seminars and
conference presentations,
the underpinning research led to Prof Chung being awarded two Invitation
Fellowships from the
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to visit Japan in 2001
and 2012.
References to the research
3.1. McCoy, S.A., Wakeman, S.J., Larking, F.D., Jefferson, M.L.,
Chung, P.W.H., Rushton,
A.G., Lees, F.P. and Heino, P.M. (1999), HAZID: A Computer Aid for
Hazard
Identification: 1. The STOPHAZ Package and the HAZID Code: An Overview,
the Issues
and the Structure, Process Safety and Environmental
Protection, 77(6), 317-327. DOI:
10.1205/095758299530242
3.2. McCoy, S.A., Wakeman, S.J., Larking, F.D., Jefferson, M.L.,
Chung, P.W.H., Rushton,
A.G., Lees, F.P. (1999), HAZID: A Computer Aid for Hazard
Identification: 2. Unit Model
System, Process Safety and Environmental Protection,
77(6), 328-334. DOI:
10.1205/095758299530251
3.3. McCoy, S.A., Zhou, D. and Chung, P.W.H., (2006), State-based
Modelling in Hazard
Identification, Applied Intelligence, 24(3),
263-279. DOI: 10.1007/s10489-006-8517-4
3.4. Palmer, C. and Chung, P.W.H. (2009), An automated system for
batch hazard and
operability studies, Reliability Engineering and System Safety,
94(6), 1095-1106. DOI:
10.1016/j.ress.2009.01.001
3.5. An, H., Chung, P., McDonald, J. and Madden, J. (2009),
Automated cause and effect
analysis for process plants, AIDIC Conference Series, 09, 9-18,
DOI:
10.3303/ACOS0909002 (A selected paper from ICheaP-9, Rome 10-13, June,
2009 for
publication in the conference series).
Grants
G3.1. STOPHAZ (Software Tool for Hazard and Operability Studies),
funded by the European
Commission under the ESPRIT 3 programme from 1993 to 1996 (http://cordis.europa.eu/).
(PI
— Dr Andrew Rushton and CI — Prof Paul Chung, both were employed by LU
through out
the grant from 1993 to 1996).
G3.2. Risk Assessment of Batch Processing Plants, funded by EPSRC
(Grant reference:
GR/R37531/01) (PI — Prof Paul Chung, employed by LU throughout the grant
from 2001 to
2004).
G3.3. Computer-aided hazard identification of batch operations,
EngD project funded by EPSRC
and Hazid Technologies from 2004 to 2008. (Supervisor — Prof Paul Chung,
employed by
LU throughout the studentship).
G3.4. Computer-aided applications in process plant safety, EngD
Project funded by EPSRC and
Hazid Technologies from 2006 to 2010. (Supervisor — Prof Paul Chung,
employed by LU
throughout the studentship).
Details of the impact
Pathway to Impact
The advance made in computer-aided safety engineering research described
above helped to
realise the vision of integrating safety consideration into the mainstream
design process and Hazid
Technologies Ltd, a University spin-out company, was founded in 2002. The
company has raised
over £1.3m [5.1] investment from venture capitalists, private
investors and a county council to
carry out the development for commercialisation. From the prototype,
considerable work has gone
into re-implementing the code to commercial standard. A means of capturing
the basic information
from the plant P&IDs was developed. The plant equipment knowledge base
was greatly enhanced.
The fault-propagation engine was refined.
In 2005, Hazid Technologies made a global sales agreement with Intergraph
[5.2], a major CAD
system vendor to the process industry. The agreement allowed Hazid
Technologies to integrate
the safety tools with Integraph's SmartPlant P&ID and for Intergraph
to sell the tools as add-on
modules to their own SmartPlant P&ID platform.
As development progressed, it became clear that the integration of
process information and
knowledge-based reasoning allows different novel tools to be developed to
automate other safety-related
tasks. Further research was carried out [G3.2 to G3.4] and new
tools to address the
difficult problem of HAZOP of batch plants and design checks were
developed. The tools are
marketed by Intergraph as SmartPlant Process Safety (SPPS) and SmartPlant
P&ID Engineering
Integrity.
For a number of years, in addition to two full-time Executive Directors,
Hazid Technologies
employed three software developers and two chemical engineers, with sales
support provided by
Intergraph. With increased sales and prospects, the company recently took
on an additional
chemical engineers to provide technical support to clients, thus providing
employment for six
graduate and mid-career professionals [5.1].
Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries of the commercialisation of the underpinning research
can be divided into two
groups. The primary beneficiaries are technology vendors. The secondary
beneficiaries are the
technology users.
In the first group, Hazid Technologies Ltd from 2002 to 2010 benefited
from the stimulation of the
research and developed a suite of state-of-the-art commercial tools for
safety engineering. They
also secured a significant amount of investment and created job
opportunities. Intergraph Corp, a
world-leading supplier of P&ID systems provided a platform for
integration and channel for sales.
Both of these companies benefit from the sales of the tools and the
services they provide. Also,
recognising the impact Hazid Technologies is making in the process
industry, the world's largest
CAD system vendor AutoDesk has admitted Hazid Technologies Ltd into their
developer network
to integrate the Hazid tools with AutoCAD P&ID [5.3] so that
the Hazid tools will become part of
their portfolio of add-on products, thus benefiting both companies.
The second group of beneficiaries is the global process industry. Current
Hazid Technologies
clients are major process plant operating companies and engineering
companies from around the
world, e.g. Arrow Energy (Australia), Bechtel (USA), Chiyoda (Japan),
Clough (Australia), Conoco
Phillips (Australia), Fluor (USA), HEC (Hyundai Engineering, Korea), IMP
(Mexico), KEPCO E&C
(Korea), Motiva (USA), Shell (Netherlands) and WorleyParsons (USA) [5.4].
The use of the tools by Hazid is changing the way these companies do
design checks and hazard
identification. The General Manager of Clough (Australia) states,
"SmartPlant P&ID Engineering
Integrity will help us to eliminate the manual P&ID checking process
for significant time and cost
savings. This unique Intergraph solution ensures we maintain high-quality
P&IDs, and when
handed over to owners, they meet all operational needs of the project.
SmartPlant Enterprise
solutions have always delivered great value to our projects, and we are
fully confident that
SmartPlant P&ID Engineering Integrity will drive continued success." [5.5].
Intergraph Process,
Power & Marine President states, "SmartPlant P&ID Engineering
Integrity enables Clough and all
other engineering companies around the world to leverage intelligent
P&ID capabilities, delivering
tremendous value to owner operators when handing over engineering
deliverables for enhanced
safety, quality and productivity of projects across industries." [5.5].
Sources to corroborate the impact
The following sources of corroboration can be made available at request:
5.1. Letter from Chair of Board of Directors of Hazid Technologies
Ltd confirming investment and
employment figures
5.2. Intergraph press release about signing sales agreement with
Hazid Technologies Ltd:
http://www.intergraph.com/assets/pressreleases/2005/3831.aspx
5.3. AutoDesk article, Process Safety: A New Approach using
AutoCAD P&ID as the Data Link, p5-6:
http://autocad.autodesk.com/ama/orig/plant/Process_Safety.pdf
5.4. List of Hazid Technologies clients from Chair of Board of
Directors of Hazid Technologies
Ltd.
5.5. Integraph press release about Clough signed agreement to use
Engineering Integrity
http://www.intergraph.com/assets/pressreleases/2013/03-20-2013.aspx