Patent ID: 6957153

Claim:
A method of controlling production of a gaseous product produced by at least one production plant having a control system to vary production of said gaseous product, the gaseous product being consumed by at least one customer at a varying rate and there being a storage capacity for the gaseous product interposed between the production plant and the customer, said method comprising: measuring usage values of a variable that is at least referable to the usage of the at least one customer of the gaseous product during a sampling time interval; calculating an average rate of change of usage of the at least one customer from the usage values over a time interval greater than that of the sampling time interval; measuring at least one pressure within the storage capacity to produce a current pressure value; inputting the current pressure value and the average rate of change of usage of the at least one customer as data into a fuzzy logic controller programmed with a fuzzy logic program to determine a change in production of the gaseous product produced by the production plant such that the pressure within the storage capacity is within a predetermined pressure range by converting data referable to the current pressure value and the average rate of change of usage into initial linguistic values which are based upon the predetermined pressure range and production capacity of the production plant, applying the initial linguistic values to at least one rule set to produce final linguistic values for the change in production of the gaseous product, and converting the final linguistic values into control data referable to the change in production; executing the fuzzy logic program over a calculation time interval; and inputting the control data to the control system over each said calculation time interval to effect the change in production of the gaseous product.