Petri net modelling of industrial processes from a P&ID description

This work presents a novel methodology to translate an industrial process description from the standard ISA 5.1 (Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID's)), and the corresponding process and operation narratives, into Interpreted Petri Nets (IPN), capturing both the plant and the specification behaviors. In contrast to other methodologies, the one herein proposed can be automatized demanding from operators and practitioners neither knowledge on Petri nets, nor ladder diagrams. Moreover, it is endowed with error detection stages to automatically remove errors introduced in the narratives, such as omissions, inconsistencies, or ambiguities. The methodology consists in capturing the process information (P&ID and narratives) in tables, and then translating them into interpreted Petri nets representing both the plant, and specification behaviors.