19,174 research outputs found
Selection of sensors by a new methodology coupling a classification technique and entropy criteria
Complex industrial processes invest a lot of money in sensors and automation devices to monitor and supervise the process in order to guarantee the production quality and the plant and operators safety. Fault detection is one of the multiple tasks of process monitoring and it critically depends on the sensors that measure the significant process variables. Nevertheless, most of the works on fault detection and diagnosis found in literature emphasis more on developing procedures to perform diagnosis given a set of sensors, and less on determining the actual location of sensors for efficient identification of faults. A methodology based on learning and classification techniques and on the information quantity measured by the Entropy concept, is proposed in order to address the problem of sensor location for fault identification. The proposed methodology has been applied to a continuous intensified reactor, the "Open Plate Reactor (OPR)", developed by Alfa Laval and studied at the Laboratory of Chemical Engineering of Toulouse. The different steps of the methodology are explained through its application to the carrying out of an exothermic reaction
A weak characterization of slow variables in stochastic dynamical systems
We present a novel characterization of slow variables for continuous Markov
processes that provably preserve the slow timescales. These slow variables are
known as reaction coordinates in molecular dynamical applications, where they
play a key role in system analysis and coarse graining. The defining
characteristics of these slow variables is that they parametrize a so-called
transition manifold, a low-dimensional manifold in a certain density function
space that emerges with progressive equilibration of the system's fast
variables. The existence of said manifold was previously predicted for certain
classes of metastable and slow-fast systems. However, in the original work, the
existence of the manifold hinges on the pointwise convergence of the system's
transition density functions towards it. We show in this work that a
convergence in average with respect to the system's stationary measure is
sufficient to yield reaction coordinates with the same key qualities. This
allows one to accurately predict the timescale preservation in systems where
the old theory is not applicable or would give overly pessimistic results.
Moreover, the new characterization is still constructive, in that it allows for
the algorithmic identification of a good slow variable. The improved
characterization, the error prediction and the variable construction are
demonstrated by a small metastable system
Constrained Nonlinear Model Predictive Control of an MMA Polymerization Process via Evolutionary Optimization
In this work, a nonlinear model predictive controller is developed for a
batch polymerization process. The physical model of the process is
parameterized along a desired trajectory resulting in a trajectory linearized
piecewise model (a multiple linear model bank) and the parameters are
identified for an experimental polymerization reactor. Then, a multiple model
adaptive predictive controller is designed for thermal trajectory tracking of
the MMA polymerization. The input control signal to the process is constrained
by the maximum thermal power provided by the heaters. The constrained
optimization in the model predictive controller is solved via genetic
algorithms to minimize a DMC cost function in each sampling interval.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 28 reference
Data-driven Soft Sensors in the Process Industry
In the last two decades Soft Sensors established themselves as a valuable alternative to the traditional means for the acquisition of critical process variables, process monitoring and other tasks which are related to process control. This paper discusses characteristics of the process industry data which are critical for the development of data-driven Soft Sensors. These characteristics are common to a large number of process industry fields, like the chemical industry, bioprocess industry, steel industry, etc. The focus of this work is put on the data-driven Soft Sensors because of their growing popularity, already demonstrated usefulness and huge, though yet not completely realised, potential. A comprehensive selection of case studies covering the three most important Soft Sensor application fields, a general introduction to the most popular Soft Sensor modelling techniques as well as a discussion of some open issues in the Soft Sensor development and maintenance and their possible solutions are the main contributions of this work
Machine Learning Applications in Estimating Transformer Loss of Life
Transformer life assessment and failure diagnostics have always been
important problems for electric utility companies. Ambient temperature and load
profile are the main factors which affect aging of the transformer insulation,
and consequently, the transformer lifetime. The IEEE Std. C57.911995 provides a
model for calculating the transformer loss of life based on ambient temperature
and transformer's loading. In this paper, this standard is used to develop a
data-driven static model for hourly estimation of the transformer loss of life.
Among various machine learning methods for developing this static model, the
Adaptive Network-Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) is selected. Numerical
simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and the accuracy of the proposed
ANFIS method compared with other relevant machine learning based methods to
solve this problem.Comment: IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting, 201
Application of Computational Intelligence Techniques to Process Industry Problems
In the last two decades there has been a large progress in the computational
intelligence research field. The fruits of the effort spent on the research in the discussed
field are powerful techniques for pattern recognition, data mining, data modelling, etc.
These techniques achieve high performance on traditional data sets like the UCI
machine learning database. Unfortunately, this kind of data sources usually represent
clean data without any problems like data outliers, missing values, feature co-linearity,
etc. common to real-life industrial data. The presence of faulty data samples can have
very harmful effects on the models, for example if presented during the training of the
models, it can either cause sub-optimal performance of the trained model or in the worst
case destroy the so far learnt knowledge of the model. For these reasons the application
of present modelling techniques to industrial problems has developed into a research
field on its own. Based on the discussion of the properties and issues of the data and the
state-of-the-art modelling techniques in the process industry, in this paper a novel
unified approach to the development of predictive models in the process industry is
presented
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