在化工製程中的操作步驟大多是以人工方式執行，但這樣的方式容易產生缺失。為了確保實際操作效率與安全，我們在本研究中利用非時間自動機模式產生並驗證可執行之操作步驟。具體而言，首先，(1)將系統中所有設備元件的自動機模型建構出來，其次(2)確定每個操作階段的所需要的操作性質，例如進料、卸料、狀態改變及穩定運行，再來(3)訂定每個階段所需的控制規範，以避免物理上不允許系統行為，並建構出相應的自動機，(4)將前述模型做平行組合，(5)將所有階段的可視事件串合併成一個完整的順序功能圖（SFC）。最後，利用商用軟體ASPEN Plus Dynamics執行動態模擬來驗證並評估所得測試步驟的可行性及經濟性。

Despite the fact that the modern chemical plants are becoming more complex than they used to be, their operating procedures are still generated manually in most cases. Since this approach is clearly laborious and error prone, it is necessary to develop a viable approach to systematically and automatically conjecture a set of reliable control actions to perform various tasks in realistic chemical processes. In this work, the untimed automata are first utilized to model all components in the given system. To facilitate efficient procedure synthesis, it is necessary to the entire operation into several distinguishable stages and to identify the intrinsic natures of each stage, e.g., stable operation, condition adjustment, material charging and/or discharging, etc. The control specifications of every stage are next described accordingly with automata to set the target state, to create different operation paths via state splitting, to limit feasible operations to those that follow only the designated partial sequences and to avoid unsafe operations by stipulating illegal strings, etc. A system model and the corresponding observable event traces (OETs) can then be created by synchronizing all aforementioned automata via the standard function of free software SUPREMICA (Åkesson et al., 2006). The corresponding operating procedures can be formally summarized with sequential function charts (SFCs) according to these OETs. The commercial package ASPEN Plus Dynamic (Al-Malah, 2007) has been used to verify the correctness of these SFCs in simulation studies. Since more than one procedure may be generated, the simulation results can also be adopted to rank them based on operability, safety and other economic criteria. Three examples, i.e., a semi-batch reaction process and the startup operations of continuous flash and distillation processes, are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

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