Artificial Intelligence Will Soon Operate High Severity Chemical Plants

Throughout the history we are now seeing more and more automation and advanced instrumentation for the energy and chemical industry. Production facility are employing less and less production engineers, supervisors and shift operators. Most chemical plant operators are now spending less time at the field and only function as monitoring and at supervisory panel operator board.

While this sounds like another conspiracy, it is actually not and for the betterment of the chemical plants. The usage of high level of intelligence and predictive process control can benefit the hazardous chemical plants
and high risk energy production facilities worldwide. Recently in October 2013 Honeywell is upgrading China's ageing process controls at its petrochemical plants. This upgrade do not qualify for an artificial intelligence status but more and more predictive control elements are being installed in chemical plants than before.

In an emergency situation, many of the safety valves already operate automatically. Most of the plants today are also big in scale which require a centralized control room, operating far from the real plants. Human interaction is less in the fields. 

The emergence of cognitive predictive system like WATSON from IBM will eventually get into energy industry for process control. Imagine a plant that operates just like a car with a push of a button, this is where the industry is leading to. WATSON is now starting in the medical industry since 2012 and is foreseen to make a presence in other industry.

Human interactions will still be needed in many of the process especially in providing directions for the operation of the plant, but the human risks will be greatly reduced with the advancement of artificial intelligence in the industry. This will also open new frontier for new economical process routes but too risky to operate before with human presence in the chemical industry.