There are several problems that should be solved in the practical application of HAZOP analysis, such as the inheritance instrument of experience knowledge, the classification of accident reasons, the recurrence of analysis process and the verification of analysis results. This paper presents a new HAZOP assistant program named HELPHAZOP, which can be used to cope with these problems. With the aid of this program, a number of influence relationship models, which can be utilized to present the relationship structure of the whole system, can be established, and a variety of spread paths, which can be employed to describe the occurrence of the accidents, can be identified. These models and paths can help analyzers to understand the analysis process of different chemical processes and to verify the analysis results. Experience knowledge or information of process parameters stored in this program, including deviations, abnormal reasons, consequences and disaster-causing ways, can contribute to the analysis of some new plants. The program has been applied in the HAZOP analysis process of residuum hydrotreating process. The probability of the human errors which would be happened because of the misunderstanding or the deficiency of plant experience in the HAZOP analysis has been reduced and the accuracy, practicability and analysis efficiency of the accident forecast have been greatly improved. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.