A graph-theory-based approach to the analysis of large-scale plants

On-line balancing of mass and energy in a large-scale plant is a feasible operation given the development state of the current data-acquisition systems. However, not all data are available in real time and the programmed version of the instrumentation flow sheets in form of a graph cannot be used directly. They need to be modified so as to match the available information. Two cases are discussed: the dynamic case, where all units are seen as dynamic components and the steady state case, where each unit is assumed to operate at steady state. The analysis is done purely on a graph basis. The idea is the essential part; the resulting algorithms are extremely simple and only require a path search algorithm such as depth-first or a breath-first search algorithm.