Data-based fault detection in chemical processes: Managing records with operator intervention and uncertain labels

•A fault detection system under uncertain labels and dynamic attributes is proposed.•A systematic framework for improving operator-process interaction is developed.•An iterative scheme for refining a database and retraining classifiers is introduced.•Application on case studies and industrial data shows potential performance gains.

Developing data-driven fault detection systems for chemical plants requires managing uncertain data labels and dynamic attributes due to operator-process interactions. Mislabeled data is a known problem in computer science that has received scarce attention from the process systems community. This work introduces and examines the effects of operator actions in records and labels, and the consequences in the development of detection models. Using a state space model, this work proposes an iterative relabeling scheme for retraining classifiers that continuously refines dynamic attributes and labels. Three case studies are presented: a reactor as a motivating example, flooding in a simulated de-Butanizer column, as a complex case, and foaming in an absorber as an industrial challenge. For the first case, detection accuracy is shown to increase by 14% while operating costs are reduced by 20%. Moreover, regarding the de-Butanizer column, the performance of the proposed strategy is shown to be 10% higher than the filtering strategy. Promising results are finally reported in regard of efficient strategies to deal with the presented problem.