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 CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS  
 

VOL. 77, 2019 

A publication of 

 
The Italian Association 

of Chemical Engineering 
Online at www.cetjournal.it 

Guest Editors: Genserik Reniers, Bruno Fabiano 
Copyright © 2019, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. 
ISBN 978-88-95608-74-7; ISSN 2283-9216 

 Safety Training System using Plant Simulator for Distance 
Cooperative Work in Chemical Plants 

Atsuko Nakaia, Kazuhiko Suzukib 
aInstitute of Safe and Security Science, Tsushima-naka 1-1-1, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-0082, JAPAN 
bGraduate School of Natural Science & Technology, Okayama UniversityTsushima-naka 3-1-1, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-
8530, JAPAN 
suzuki-k@cc.okayama-u.ac.jp 

According to a recent report by the Japanese government, about 40% of accidents in the chemical industrial 
complex are caused by human factors. At the same time, due to changes in the social structure, problems of 
retirement of a large number of mandatory retirements at the manufacturing site and technical inheritance due 
to a decrease in the labor force population have been pointed out. To convey accurately indication information 
of work in chemical plant, we need safety education systems to support operators/workers to follow correct 
operating procedures without human error. In this study, it is used a dynamic plant simulator instead of a real 
chemical plant to reproduce the behavior of the plant. Plant operators can use tablet PCs in the field or 
desktop PCs in the control room. The proposed system can display information on the tablet PCs that have 
been standardized to include various operational procedures under regular conditions as well as during 
emergencies. In addition, the field worker can control plant simulator from onsite using mobile small PCs. The 
plant information is stored in a database that can be accessed and used as needed. The field operators can 
communicate with the control room about ongoing situations using the camera included in the tablet PC. In 
many chemical plants, onsite workers cannot quantitatively know the degree of a valve opening, and in order 
to know whether the work they did was appropriate, they must contact the control room. To solve this 
inefficiency, in this system, the process value of the plant simulator is routed to the tablet PC. Under the 
present circumstances emergency training to prevent accidents at chemical plants is not enough although 
their importance is recognized. We expect that this system can be used for safety training/education using a 
real onsite work environment. 

1. Introduction 

1.1 Recent accidents in Japan 

In past few years, there have been many catastrophic explosions and fires in chemical industries in Japan.  
Following pictures in Figure 1 (METI Japan, 2016) show the tragic explosion and fire accident occurred in the 
large-scale facilities. These accidents were initiated by various causes, for example, equipment failure, 
leakage from pipe/devices which caused by corrosion and erosion, mishandling by operators during 
operations/covering procedures.  

 

Figure 1: Recent accidents in Japan 

                                

 
 

 

 
   

                                                  
DOI: 10.3303/CET1977144 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Paper Received: 9 November 2018; Revised: 3 April 2019; Accepted: 10  July  2019 

Please cite this article as: Nakai A., Suzuki K., 2019, Safety Training System using Plant Simulator for Distance Cooperative Work in Chemical 
Plants, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 77, 859-864  DOI:10.3303/CET1977144  

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It was truly regretful that the injuries and the death of employees due to these accidents, and the damage was 
expanded to the local residents as well. According to a recent report by the Japanese government, about 40% 
of accidents in the chemical industrial complex are caused by human factors, including misjudgment, 
misoperation, recognitions and confirmation error. In FY2017, there were 252 accidents reported by 679 
establishments in special disaster prevention areas such as petrochemical industrial complexes. Of the total 
number of cases, 101 (40.1%) were due to human factors,139 (55.1%) were due to physical factors (e.g., 
corrosion, equipment failure), and 12 (4.8%) were due to disasters such as earthquakes, arson, and others.  

1.2 Background of the accidents 

By investigating these accidents, it should be recognized that hazards easily break through layers of defences, 
barriers and safeguards. When we think about the reason why many serious accidents occur, changes of 
Japanese social situation and industrial structure become clear to be one of primary factors of these 
accidents. The company culture also depends on changes of Japanese social situation and industrial 
structure. This point caused lower sensitivity to hazards by limited experience of hazards during the childhood 
under the protected safety environment. Change of industrial structure reduced level of proficiency in technical 
skill/knowledge of operator. As a result, operators in plants are less able to identify hazard in chemical plants 
caused by lack of sensitivity/knowledge for potential risk and understand the overall picture and the individual 
contents of processes for engineers and workers. And lack teamwork also take place in realistic chemical 
plants operations. Operators/workers cannot adequate correspond to abnormal situation in chemical plants. 
One way to solve problems, high-tech safety instrumented system should be introduced to chemical plants. 
Most of the problem should be solved by high technology development and introducing to real plants. 
However, problems related human should be solved education and training to improve sensibility for safety, to 
development of ability to identify potential hazards, to reduce mishandling/erroneous operation. Improve 
human skills by safety education. 

1.3 Challenges for safety education  

Sustainable operation of chemical installations and plants worldwide depend heavily on how procedures and 
standards are implemented as much as on how the human-machine interface is responsive to sudden 
mechanical failures, natural disasters or human mistakes. These environments are best managed within well-
established practices defined and known as safety culture. After the FUKUSHIMA accident, people in Japan in 
general feel anxious about nuclear engineering and technology. Also chemical industries field have the same 
situation. It is urgent required to rebuild the public trust that has been lost in safety of large-scale facilities. 
Science and technology should be linked to the welfare for human beings. Our societies need to be assured 
regarding the safety and reliability of industrial facilities to prevent accidents. Training-by-Doing is as a Key for 
Safe Actions. Because, when we face to an emergency event, it is often made a mistake. Each person and 
groups of people have different values and beliefs, which ultimately affects social awareness and creates 
difficulties in partnership. Therefore, to build and enhance safety culture in our society and workplaces, 
engineering safety training/education is especially important. (Pasman et al. 2013) 

2. Purpose and approach to the safety training system 

2.1 Current Status and Issues of education/training for workers in chemical plant 

In many chemical industries in Japan, practical education is mainly conducted in two ways. One is OJT (On-
the-Job-Training) and the other is OFF-JT(Off-the-Job-Training). The following table 1 summarizes the current 
state and issues of education/training for plant safe operations. OJT is a type of training method and in-house 
education method performed in the company. It refers to vocational education of employees through doing 
real plant maintenance and operation in the workplace. OFF-JT is an education and training in which 
employees temporarily leave regular work and acquire expert knowledge and skills. It is the purpose of 
vocational education to enable employees to work accurately. Actual chemical plant work is carried out among 
multiple workers in a remote cooperative work environment via role sharing．Safe control of chemical plant 
has the following dangers，reaction hazard of chemical materials, the inability to directly touch chemical 
product, the fact that control room and work sites are separated from each other cannot directly confirm each 
other's work. Especially troubles due to human factors tend to occur in unsteady work such as accidents, 
disasters, and start-up and shut-down of chemical plants. However, until now training of such work has 
recognized its importance, but it has not been practiced much. In this research it is developed the safety 
training system for these issues. As candidate solution to problems, education and training for development of 
safety culture are considered. In this paper, integrated instruction system consisting of dynamic simulator, 
virtual reality and argument reality system are proposed to educate/training for chemical plant operators. Aims 

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are to bring up operators who have high sensitivity for hazards in plants, excellent skills for stable plants 
operation and abilities to cope with abnormal/emergency situation in plants. 

Table 1: Current status and problems of education and training of plant operation 

2.2 Plant operator activities to recover from abnormal condition 

Before developing the system, plant operator activities are organized as follows. Operators cope with the 
abnormal condition of the plant by their synthetic judgments. They think their synthetic judgments based on 
their knowledge, experiences and the manual of the plant. Their synthetic judgment is composed of 6 thinking 
activities. (Hori et al. 1999) These activities are described in the following. 
1. Fault Detection: Operators detect a fault of the process based on the alarm and the plant condition. 
2. Prediction of Effect of Fault Propagation. 
3. Judgment of Necessary of Corrective Action 
4. Fault Diagnosis: Operators identify hardware or software malfunction based on data of process variables, 

their knowledge and experiences at the same time of the previous activity. 
5. Decide the Best Corrective Action 
6. Circumstantial Judgment after Emergency Shut-down: Operators grasp the situation after the shutdown. 
Accidents in chemical plants may expand due to misrecognition, erroneous judgment, etc. by humans. The 
purpose of this study is to support these human skills by safety training. 

2.3 Integrated information using chemical plant simulator for “training by doing”  

Not only knowledge but also practical work training is important for plant safety training. The proposed system 
considers sharing the operational information that is required to prevent misoperation and misjudgment onsite. 
(Komatsubara,2008) In this study, it is used a dynamic plant simulator instead of a real chemical plant to 
reproduce the behavior of the real plant. By sharing real-time onsite information, a cooperative work 
environment between the board operators and the field operators is established. (Nakai et al. 2017) In 
addition, by checking the information of the plant simulator on site and inputting necessary operation 
information, it is possible to carry out the failure response training using the on-site work environment. In 
order to implement the system, the information that is essential to the running of the chemical plant needs to 
be clarified and classified as follows (Nakai et al. 2017): 

1. Standard information such as operation procedures and P&ID diagrams.  
2. Onsite images. This is dynamic information that changes in real time. 
3. Sensor data of the dynamic simulator depending on the onsite and control room work. 
4. Communication for working requires interactivity 

Various information are mixed at the work site of the chemical plant, and an experienced plant operator who 
performs rapid troubleshooting uses thus information to decide the optimum handling work. In this research, 
work instruction information is presented effectively to workers with little experience. By sharing information on 
the control room and on site, training close to actual work became possible. (Nakai et al. 2014) Experience 
activities are literally activities that are experienced in the field through their bodies. Among them are "indirect 

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experiences" that learn sensuously through the Internet, television, etc. in addition to "direct experiences" 
actually involved in the real thing to be realized, "simulated experiences” learned simulatively and through 
simulated models．Training-by-Doing is a technique that connects both actions and brings about better 
results. 

3. Safety training system for distance cooperative work 

Education and training so far mainly focused on learning by one person, primarily on education in the 
classroom or mock-up equipment. To keep working safety, communication is important because on-site work 
of chemical plants is usually conducted by multiple people. (Nakata, 2007) In this research, it is implemented 
instructional information and information sharing function for multiple workers in the system. The outline of the 
proposed system is shown in Figure 2. Work information can be shared by multiple devices connected to the 
local area in order to use the web browser. The system and the dynamic simulator communicate with each 
other through the WEB API. Figure 3 shows the communication between dynamic simulator and client PCs. 

Figure 2: Outline of the proposed system                        Figure 3: Connected with dynamic simulator 

3.1 Instructional information using VR(Virtual Reality)and AR(Augmented Reality ) technology  

In an emergency, the operator is required to make a quick decision in order to prevent the expansion of the 
accident. But an untrained operator cannot respond enough to emergencies. (Hara et al. 2015) 
Education/training of non-stationary operation for workers is needed. However, reproducing the non-stationary 
conditions to actual equipment or mock-up cannot be performed because it is dangerous. Also a company 
requires a huge cost to build a mock-up of the plant facilities for education. VR is a technology that is 
artificially creating a sense of reality. AR can function in ways that enhance one’s current perception of reality. 
(Ishii et al. 2013) In chemical plant, due to the installation of similar aggregating pipes and valves, there is a 
risk of serious damage occurring due to operate wrong valve. With advances in computer technology, the 
proposed system shows the relevant operating procedures and accurate equipment information using AR and 
Image recognition. The field operators captured the equipment through the camera of tablet PC. The name of 
equipment and operating information are shown in the display. The AR marker shows an image of a set 
pattern, which is indicator for specifying the installation site and displaying additional information, the name of 
equipment and process condition etc. The operator identifies target equipment with the camera, and can 
confirm the correct operating procedure on the tablet PC. (Yating et al. 2015) The work information is 
displayed to the operator first, after the task has been completed, the next work procedure is presented by 
updating the plant information. 

3.2 Creating the training scenario using accident case/malfunction procedure  

In this research, it is aimed to develop a system that can be applied to training by distance cooperative work 
environment which requires communication similar to real work such as work instructions and reporting. In 
order to convey training purposes, the system makes a training scenario to provide information to the 
operator. Explosions and fires that are highly dangerous and cannot actually be experienced are reproduced 
using VR technology. The plant model in a virtual plant and the sensor data of DS are linked by the system. 
Therefore, the change of the plant condition in a real plant is reflected to virtual plant. The training scenario is 
created with reference to accident cases or malfunction operation procedures. Since the information of the 
plant simulator and the operation procedure can be referred to from multiple mobile terminals, it is possible to 
cope with the training of distance cooperative work for multiple people. In the training, instead of operating the 

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actual equipment, the trainee input the operation amount from the mobile terminal to the plant simulator. Since 
the sensor data of the simulator is displayed on the terminal, the trainee can confirm the success or failure of 
the work at the onsite or the control room. An example of training scenario creation is shown in Figure 4. The 
created scenario is stored in the database of the system. 

 

Figure 4: Creating the training scenarios and instructional information 

4. Case study of the HDS Plant Procedure 

4.1 Malfunction scenario: VGO feed trouble  

This system was implemented assuming a malfunction within the HDS plant simulator in Figure 5. The 
database for this system stores the information necessary for performing correct work, and field operators can 
use this system on tablet PC or a small device such as an android smartphone connected to a local area 
network. The main functions of this system are the selection and presentation of operation information, the 
acquisition and display of sensor data from the plant dynamic simulator, sharing real-time images, and 
communication by text message. In addition, the trainee can control plant simulator using mobile device in 
Figure 6.  

Figure 5: Cooperative operation model                             Figure 6: Instructional function for safety training 

4.2 Connected dynamic plant simulator  

In this system, bidirectional communication is performed between the simulator and the mobile terminal used 
by the trainee via a server in order to perform work training by distance collaborative work. Figure 7 and 
Figure 8 show the connecting of simulator when implemented with this system. The trainee performs work 
while confirming the behavior of the plant reproduced by the plant simulator with a portable terminal such as a 
tablet PC. At this time, the trainee inputs the operation amount of the operation target device to the tablet PC 
instead of moving the actual equipment. Each trainee in the control room and the work site carries out the 
work while communicating. Since the system using an internet browser, it can work with multiple users using a 

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terminal connected to the network to share the real-time images on site and check the plant information by the 
simulator. 

 

Figure 7: Operation screen for control                             Figure 8: Connected dynamic plant simulator 

5. Conclusion  

Recently, it is pointed out that the site workers knowledge and skill is declining in the chemical industry fields 
in Japan due to several severe accidents occurred. Main causes of these accidents could be related to human 
behavior in the emergency operation. By investigating these accidents, it is recognized that employees have 
lower sensitivity to hazards by limited experience of hazards in their job site and in their early life. Most of the 
problem should be solved by high technology development and introducing to real plants. However, this is a 
primary safe measure and then requires on-site operator intervention. To improve this situation, the safety 
education and training system have developed to increase the ability to respond to emergencies such as the 
accident/disaster as a team. In the system, augmented reality (AR) technology for information presentation 
and virtual reality (VR) environment for education and training are applied, and dynamic simulator was used to 
describe the plant dynamic behavior. The main functions of this system are the selection and presentation of 
operation information, the acquisition and display of sensor data from the plant dynamic simulator, sharing 
real-time images, and communication by text message. In addition, the trainee can control plant simulator 
using mobile device. For the future, it is expected that this system will be applied to evacuation drills etc. using 
on-site workspace. 

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Okubo, M. (1999). A high reliability plant for labor saving. Role of an operator and safety design on 
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