Petri Net-Based Approach for Performance Modeling and Availability Analysis of a Butter Oil Processing Plant

Lovely Professional University With the advent of more complex systems in various process industries, the need for availability and reliability analysis has increased manifold. The availability analysis is helpful to achieve minimum failure objectives or to enhance the mean time between failures so as to meet the production targets. To this effect, this chapter proposes an application of availability analysis in the process industry. The chapter proposes modeling of a butter oil processing plant to compute the availability of various subsystems of the plant. The industrial system consists of four subsystems, namely, heater, clarifier, filling, and granulation. The Petri net-based approach is used to model the behavior of the system. The effect of failure and repair rates on plant availability has been analyzed and discussed. The results can be presented to the maintenance personnel which, in turn, will help them to study the dynamic behavior of the plant and to decide maintenance priorities.