Process analysis, monitoring and diagnosis, using multivariate projection methods

Multivariate statistical methods for the analysis, monitoring and diagnosis of process operating performance are becoming more important because of the availability of on-line process computers which routinely collect measurements on large numbers of process variables. Traditional univariate control charts have been extended to multivariate quality control situations using the Hotelling T2 statistic. Recent approaches to multivariate statistical process control which utilize not only product quality data (Y), but also all of the available process variable data (X) are based on multivariate statistical projection methods (principal component analysis, (PCA), partial least squares, (PLS), multi-block PLS and multi-way PCA). An overview of these methods and their use in the statistical process control of multivariate continuous and batch processes is presented. Applications are provided on the analysis of historical data from the catalytic cracking section of a large petroleum refinery, on the monitoring and diagnosis of a continuous polymerization process and on the monitoring of an industrial batch process.