PNNL

Abstract

Blast furnace (BF) in ironmaking is a nonlinear dynamic process with complicated physical-chemical reactions, where multi-phase and multi-field coupling and large time delay occur during its operation. In BF operation, the molten iron temperature (MIT) as well as Si, P and S contents of molten iron are the most essential molten iron quality (MIQ) indices, whose measurement, modeling and control have always been important issues in metallurgic engineering and automation field. This paper develops a novel data-driven nonlinear state space modeling for the prediction and control of multivariate MIQ indices by integrating hybrid modeling and control techniques. First, to improve modeling efficiency, a data-driven hybrid method combining canonical correlation analysis and correlation analysis is proposed to identify the most influential controllable variables as the modeling inputs from multitudinous factors would affect the MIQ indices. Then, a Hammerstein model for the prediction of MIQ indices is established using the LS-SVM based nonlinear subspace identification method. Such a model is further simplified by using piecewise cubic Hermite interpolating polynomial method to fit the complex nonlinear kernel function. Compared to the original Hammerstein model, this simplified model can not only significantly reduce the computational complexity, but also has almost the same reliability and accuracy for a stable prediction of MIQ indices. Last, in order to verify the practicability of the developed model, it is applied in designing a genetic algorithm based nonlinear predictive controller for multivariate MIQ indices by directly taking the established model as a predictor. Industrial experiments show the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed approach.