Operator training simulators in the chemical industry: review, issues, and future directions

Abstract An inevitable need for the skilled operators to increase the safety and productivity is not new to the chemical industry. Consequently, the training of operators is considered as a very important activity in the chemical industry. Conventional training methodologies are ineffective in training the operators for seldom-occurring perilous situations. The operator training simulator (OTS) is an alternative to train operators without actually endangering the plant and personnel. This contribution covers and discusses the need for OTS, applications of OTS in the chemical industry, issues related to OTS, salient features of a good OTS, commercial software packages used to build OTS, and training configurations. In this article, applications of OTS in the chemical industry reported in the open literature from 1990 to mid-2013 are also reviewed briefly. The review shows that OTS has been successfully used in many chemical industries. Finally, this article concludes by outlining the future directions. Overall, it provides a deeper understanding of many issues about the OTS to interested researchers, vendors, modeling engineers, and application engineers aiming to stimulate further developments in this area leading to improved OTS and their increased usage in the chemical industry.

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