Imperial College London
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Professor Nina F. Thornhill

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering

Emeritus Professor of Process Automation
 
 
 
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Contact

 

n.thornhill

 
 
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Location

 

ACE ExtensionSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Publication Type
Year
to

212 results found

Apelt TA, Thornhill NF, 2009, Inferential measurement of SAG mill parameters V: MPC simulation, MINERALS ENGINEERING, Vol: 22, Pages: 1045-1052, ISSN: 0892-6875

Journal article

Apelt TA, Thornhill NF, 2009, Inferential measurement of sag mill parameters IV: Inferential model validation, MINERALS ENGINEERING, Vol: 22, Pages: 1032-1044, ISSN: 0892-6875

Journal article

Thambirajah J, Benabbas L, Bauer M, Thornhill NFet al., 2009, Cause-and-effect analysis in chemical processes utilizing XML, plant connectivity and quantitative process history, COMPUTERS & CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, Vol: 33, Pages: 503-512, ISSN: 0098-1354

Journal article

Beez S, Fay A, Thornhill NF, 2008, Automatic generation of Bond Graph models of process plants, IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, ETFA 2008, Publisher: IEEE, Pages: 1294-1301

This paper presents an application for the automatic generation of Bond Graph models. The basis for this automated creation is a modified plant model in the XML-format according to the IEC PAS 62424 (CAEX). The application developed in the programming language C, extracts and converts the information which is, then, stored in a model file meeting the requirements and structure of the modelling/simulation-language Dymola. Bond Graphs are used as the modelling technique since they do not distinguish between different energy domains and, therefore, combine several advantages against other modelling techniques. The developed application can be used for multiple purposes such as simulations, visualizations and other specific tasks that might emerge during the planning and operation process of plants and other engineering systems. © 2008 IEEE.

Conference paper

Pate ME, Turner MK, Thornhill NF, Titchener-Hooker NJet al., 2008, Principal component analysis of nonlinear chromatography, BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Vol: 20, Pages: 215-222, ISSN: 8756-7938

Journal article

Bauer M, Thornhill NF, 2008, A practical method for identifying the propagation path of plant-wide disturbances, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 18, Pages: 707-719, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Patwardhan SC, Shah SL, 2008, A continuous stirred tank heater simulation model with applications, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 18, Pages: 347-360, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Edwards-Parton S, Thornhill NF, Bracewell DG, Liddell JM, Titchener-Hooker NJet al., 2008, Principal component score modeling for the rapid description of chromatographic separations, BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Vol: 24, Pages: 202-208, ISSN: 8756-7938

Journal article

Thornhill NF, 2008, The CSTH Simulation model

This code is a first principles simulation of a continuous stirred tank heater (CSTH) pilot plant at the University of Alberta. The model has heat and mass balance, and a very realistic feature is that instrument, actuator and process non-linearities have been carefully measured. Models in Simulink, supporting Matlab files are available together with experimental noise and disturbance sequences.A full description is given in:Thornhill, N.F., Patwardhan, S.C., and Shah, S.L., 2008, A continuous stirred tank heater simulation model with applications, Journal of Process Control, 18, 347-360.

Software

Choudhury MAAS, Shah SL, Thornhill NF, 2008, Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction Data Driven Approaches Introduction, DIAGNOSIS OF PROCESS NONLINEARITIES AND VALVE STICTION: DATA DRIVEN APPROACHES, Publisher: SPRINGER-VERLAG LONDON LTD, Pages: 1-+, ISBN: 978-3-540-79223-9

Book chapter

Bauer M, Cox JW, Caveness MH, Downs JJ, Thornhill NFet al., 2007, Nearest neighbors methods for root cause analysis of plantwide disturbances, INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH, Vol: 46, Pages: 5977-5984, ISSN: 0888-5885

Journal article

Choudhury MAAS, Kariwala V, Thornhill NF, Douke H, Shah SL, Takada H, Forbes JFet al., 2007, Detection and diagnosis of plant-wide oscillations, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, Vol: 85, Pages: 208-219, ISSN: 0008-4034

Journal article

Bauer M, Cox JW, Caveness MH, Downs JJ, Thornhill NFet al., 2007, Finding the direction of disturbance propagation in a chemical process using transfer entropy, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, Vol: 15, Pages: 12-21, ISSN: 1063-6536

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Horch A, 2007, Advances and new directions in plant-wide disturbance detection and diagnosis, Control Engineering Practice, Vol: 15, Pages: 1196-1206, ISSN: 1873-6939

This article reviews advances in detection and diagnosis of plant-wide control system disturbances in chemical processes and discusses new directions that look promising for the future. Causes of plant-wide disturbances include non-linear limit cycles in control loops, controller interactions and tuning problems. The diagnosis of non-linearity, especially when due to valve stiction, has been an active area. Detection of controller interactions and disturbances due to plant structure remain open issues, however, and will need new approaches. For the future, the linkage of data-driven analysis with a qualitative model of the process is an exciting prospect. Finally, the paper offers some brief comments about emerging applications.

Journal article

Yim SY, Ananthakumar HG, Benabbas L, Horch A, Drath R, Thornhill NFet al., 2006, Using process topology in plant-wide control loop performance assessment, COMPUT CHEM ENG, Vol: 31, Pages: 86-99, ISSN: 0098-1354

This contribution describes how disturbances in a control system can be isolated and diagnosed automatically based on plant topology. In order to demonstrate this, a prototype software has been designed and implemented which, when given an electronic process schematic of a plant and results from a data-driven analysis, allows the user to pose queries about the plant and to find root causes of plant-wide disturbances. This hybrid system puts together two new technologies: the plant topology information written in XML according to the computer aided engineering exchange (CAEX) schema and the results of a signal analysis tool called plant-wide disturbance analysis (PDA). The isolation and diagnosis of the root causes of plant-wide disturbances is enhanced when process connectivity is considered alongside the results of data-driven analysis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal article

Choudhury MAAS, Shah SL, Thornhill NF, Shook DSet al., 2006, Automatic detection and quantification of stiction in control valves, CONTROL ENGINEERING PRACTICE, Vol: 14, Pages: 1395-1412, ISSN: 0967-0661

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Melbo H, Wiik J, 2006, Multidimensional visualization and clustering of historical process data, INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH, Vol: 45, Pages: 5971-5985, ISSN: 0888-5885

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Naim MM, 2006, An exploratory study to identify rogue seasonality in a steel company's supply network using spectral principal component analysis, EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol: 172, Pages: 146-162, ISSN: 0377-2217

Journal article

Huang B, Ding SX, Thornhill NF, 2006, Alternative solutions to multi-variate control performance assessment problems, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 16, Pages: 457-471, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Pagliarani A, Kenyon AJ, Thornhill NF, Sirisena E, Lee K, Law VJet al., 2006, Process harmonic pulling in RIE plasma-tool, ELECTRONICS LETTERS, Vol: 42, Pages: 120-121, ISSN: 0013-5194

Journal article

Yim SY, Ananthakumar HG, Benabbas L, Horch A, Drath R, Thornhill NFet al., 2006, Using the Process Schematic in Plant-wide Disturbance Analysis, Joint Conference Event of the 9th Symposium on Process Systems Engineering (PSE 2006)/16th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE-16), Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, Pages: 1431-1436, ISSN: 1570-7946

Conference paper

Xia CM, Howell J, Thornhill NF, 2005, Detecting and isolating multiple plant-wide oscillations via spectral independent component analysis, AUTOMATICA, Vol: 41, Pages: 2067-2075, ISSN: 0005-1098

Journal article

Tangirala AK, Shah SL, Thornhill NF, 2005, PSCMAP: A new tool for plant-wide oscillation detection, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 15, Pages: 931-941, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Wang M, Thornhill NF, Huang B, 2005, Closed-loop identification with a quantizer, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 15, Pages: 729-740, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Shah SL, 2005, New directions in control loop assessment and diagnosis, COMPUTING AND CONTROL ENGINEERING, Vol: 16, Pages: 18-22, ISSN: 0956-3385

Journal article

Huang B, Ding SX, Thornhill NF, 2005, Practical solutions to multivariate feedback control performance assessment problem: reduced a priori knowledge of interactor matrices, JOURNAL OF PROCESS CONTROL, Vol: 15, Pages: 573-583, ISSN: 0959-1524

Journal article

Horch A, Hegre V, Hilmen K, Melbø H, Benabbas L, Pistikopoulos S, Thornhill N, Bonavita Net al., 2005, Root cause, ABB Review, Pages: 44-48, ISSN: 1013-3119

An international team from ABB and the Imperial College London/University College London's Centre for process Systems Engineering has initiated a project to reduce the time spent on troubleshooting in processing plants. The project aims at automatically detecting plant-wide disturbances and determining the root causes of disturbances and oscillations in production processes. Researchers at the University have developed methods for computer-aided plant disturbance analysis. The main aim of the researchers is to develop a software application that identifies unwanted plant behavior and its root causes so that operational and maintenance efforts are directed efficiently.

Journal article

Thornhill NF, Bauer M, Meaburn A, 2005, Cause and effect analysis of chemical processes, IEE Seminar on Control Loop Assessment and Diagnosis, Publisher: IET, Pages: 23-30, ISSN: 0537-9989

In continuous chemical processes, disturbances in the process conditions can propagate widely and cause secondary upsets in remote locations. The aim of this paper is to apply some recent data-driven methods for detection and diagnosis of process disturbances using historical process data that have been proving successful in a range of applications. An industrial case study is presented in which a plant-wide control system disturbance caused by the presence of a recycle was successfully located and then verified by further plant testing. © The IEE.

Conference paper

Choudhury MAAS, Thornhill NF, Shah SL, 2005, Modelling valve stiction, CONTROL ENGINEERING PRACTICE, Vol: 13, Pages: 641-658, ISSN: 0967-0661

Journal article

Thornhill NF, 2005, Finding the source of nonlinearity in a process with plant-wide oscillation, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, Vol: 13, Pages: 434-443, ISSN: 1063-6536

Journal article

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