Boilers are considered as the stem of the most of
real industries such as power plant generation and
petrochemical industry. So, it is essential to improve
performance and safety related issues for a safe and efficient
operation. A sudden shut down of a boiler unit causes a huge
loss of the operating revenue. Hence to enhance availability and
reduce the shut down times, the application of fault detection
and diagnosis methods will play a great role in early
identification of faults and selecting the most suitable fault
tolerant scenario without losing the services. Utility boiler in
Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals (SIDPEC) plants is selected as the
case study of this work. The boiler has multi-loops, the most
important loop, which is called the master loop, is identified on
line. The identified model is used to detect a real abnormal
situation that has been carried during the operation using
model based fault diagnosis methods. Different fault scenarios
are simulated on the identified model in order to validate the
observer based fault detection algorithm. Finally the fault
detection algorithm is applied on real abnormal behavior to
identify it.