Advanced Intelligent Multisensor System for Control of Boilers and Furnaces

AIMBURN - 2192

Keywords control systems, knowledge-based systems, process industries, sensors, vision systems, pollution control

Start Date: 21-JUN-89 / Duration: 36 months

[ contact / participants ]

Objectives and Approach

The objective of this project is to develop, implement and test a general-purpose multi-sensor system to optimise the operation of industrial fuel-burning systems, and to control and assist the maintenance of industrial furnaces and boilers.

The impetus for the work stems from the fact that industrial competitiveness within the European Community over the next decade will undoubtedly depend on the efficient use of information technologies to optimise energy consumption. Since energy consumption and pollution are frequently linked, the implications for pollution abatement may have also to be considered in the application of IT to improve industrial competitiveness. The project is aimed to assure optimum conditions of industrial burning systems through the maintenance of efficient flame characteristics, which are achieved with the implementation of adequate control mechanisms in two different levels, as follows:

1. Low-level control
   • Definition of simplified dynamic models and proper control strategies.
   • Implementation and optimization of new sensors, either physical and chemical or optical. It has been given particular attention to the development of a vision system to acquire data on flames and to classify them according with previously learned standards. Other sensors under development included viscosity meters for heavy fuel-oil and molten glass and a volumetric fuel flowmeter for fuel-oil.
   • Sensor integration.
2. High-level control
   Definition and implementation of actions based on:
   • Sensorial information
   • Specific knowledge driven by sophisticated mathematical models of the flow and heat transfer characteristics of industrial burning systems.
   • Empirical knowledge of sub-system not considered by the mathematical models.

The AIMBURN project has been essentially industry-driven, but the progress of the work has revealed a scientific potential which has been naturally exploited. Considerable innovative and original work include:

• use of computer vision for flame classification
• experimental characterisation of turbulent flames in mutual interaction
• numerical simulation of turbulent flame images
• implementation of furnace control strategies based on physically-derived models
• sensor development for molten glass and heavy fuel-oil viscosity
• dedicated hardware integrating recently produced DSP chips in purpose-built architectures
• development of physically sub-models to predict NO[X] emissions from industrial combustion environments
• application of expert systems to real time processes
• standardisation of procedures for knowledge acquisition in continuous plants.

Exploitation

The results of the work will be exploited either as an overall product consisting in an advanced multi-sensor system for the control of large industrial furnaces, or as various subproducts as follows:

• dedicated software for the artificial vision of flames incorporating schemes for data acquisition and processing, system optimization and fault detection
• dedicated hardware for fast processing of mass storage data
• advanced sensors for flow and viscosity to be used in robust environments
• software packages for the analysis of the thermal efficiency of industrial combustion systems
• dedicated software to control industrial processes with particular applications to the glass industry
• knowledge-based systems for continuous process industries
• general methodology for continuous flow plant analysis oriented towards Knowledge Engineering and aimed to provide a Static Conceptual Frame for Risk Explanations.

CONTACT POINT

Prof Manuel Valssina Heitor
ADIST
Av. Rovisco Pais
P - 1096 LISBOA
tel: +351/ 1-847.3453
fax: +351/ 1-89 61 56

email:: D2370@BETA.IST.RCCN.PT

Participants

ADIST - P - C
FABRICA DE VIDROS BARBOSA & ALMEIDA - P - P
IGC-INSPECTION Y GARANTIA
DE CALIDAD SA - E - P
IDS-INTELLIGENT DECISION SYSTEMS SA - E - P
SERVOTROL - P - P
UNISOFT - P - P
TRION PRAEZISIONSELEKTRONIK
GMBH & CO KG - D - P
MAGUE - P - P
ELECTRICIDADE DE PORTUGAL - P - A
INSTITUTO SUPERIOR TECNICO - P - A
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE,
TECHNOLOGY & MEDICINE - UK - A

AIMBURN - 2192, December 1993

please address enquiries to the ESPRIT Information Desk

html version of synopsis by Nick Cook