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Intelligent optimal control system for ball mill grinding process

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Abstract

Operation aim of ball mill grinding process is to control grinding particle size and circulation load to ball mill into their objective limits respectively, while guaranteeing producing safely and stably. The grinding process is essentially a multi-input multi-output system (MIMO) with large inertia, strong coupling and uncertainty characteristics. Furthermore, being unable to monitor the particle size online in most of concentrator plants, it is difficult to realize the optimal control by adopting traditional control methods based on mathematical models. In this paper, an intelligent optimal control method with two-layer hierarchical construction is presented. Based on fuzzy and rule-based reasoning (RBR) algorithms, the intelligent optimal setting layer generates the loops setpoints of the basic control layer, and the latter can track their setpoints with decentralized PID algorithms. With the distributed control system (DCS) platform, the proposed control method has been built and implemented in a concentration plant in Gansu province, China. The industrial application indicates the validation and effectiveness of the proposed method.

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Correspondence to Dayong Zhao.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Fundamental Research Program of China (No. 2009CB320601), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61020106003, 61134006, 61240012), the 111 Project(No. B08015), and the NKTSP Project (No. 2012BAF19G00).

Dayong ZHAO is a Ph.D. candidate at the State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries, Northeastern University. His research interests include intelligent modeling and intelligent control of complex industrial process.

Tianyou CHAI received his Ph.D. degree from Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1985. He is a chair professor with Northeastern University. He is currently the director of the Division of Information Science of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Beijing, China, the director of the State Key Laboratory of Synthetical Automation for Process Industries, Shenyang, and the director of the National Engineering and Technology Research Center of Metallurgical Automation, Shenyang. His current research interests include adaptive controls, intelligent decoupling controls, integrated plant control and systems, and the development of control technologies with application to various industrial processes. He is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is also a fellow of IFAC and IEEE.

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Zhao, D., Chai, T. Intelligent optimal control system for ball mill grinding process. J. Control Theory Appl. 11, 454–462 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-013-1210-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11768-013-1210-3

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