Mal-operation is one of important factors that lead to disaster in chemical processes.Batch processes with a lower level of automation require many manual operations.These manual operations make increased occurrence of mal-operation possible.Therefore

it is necessary to analyze the effects of mal-operation on the batch process so that protective measures can be effectively taken.To achieve this aim

a novel consequence analysis strategy for mal-operation in the batch processes was proposed.Qualitative models of manual operation

production process

and environment were constructed by using the concept of qualitative simulation.These models could describe the batch process more satisfactorily.Qualitative model of environment and every qualitative model describing the production process

such as a qualitative model of pump or reactor

had the faculty of inference

which enabled these models to update their states and infer whether some hazards would occur by themselves when an operation was being dealt with.A batch process that produced vulcanization accelerator called M was modeled

and three wrong operating procedures were analyzed.The results showed that not only adverse consequences but also evolution of abnormal states in the batch process caused by mal-operation could be analyzed by using the proposed method.