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Artificial Intelligence Abstracts

"Neural Networks for Development of Apparent Zero Lag Time Sensors for Process Control", C.A. Miller, P.M. Lemiuex, K.J. Fritsky, P.J. Chappell, and R.L. Capone, presented at the First North American Conference and Exhibition on Emerging Clean Air Technologies, Toronto, Canada, Sept. 26-30, 1994.

Neural Networks for Development of Apparent Zero Lag Time Sensors for Process Control

C.A. Miller, P.M. Lemiuex, K.J. Fritsky, P.J. Chappell U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Air and Energy Engineering Research Laboratory Combustion Research Branch (MD-65) Research Triangle Park, NC 27711 and R.L. Capone Ronald L. Capone Associates Arlington, VA


Abstract
Almost every process control uses some form of sensor as a means of measuring the state of the controlled process. The time between measuring the state of the process and the output of that measurement for use in a control system can often be longer than the length of a transient process change. Unfortunately, there is often no alternative to the slow response and, although faster responding sensors may be available, their cost is high. By predicting the state of the process a short time ahead, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have the capability to create "virtual sensors" which have apparent zero lag time. ANNs have been successfully used to predict the behavior of time-series data such as daily stock market prices after being adequately trained using historical system behavior. In this paper, back-propagation ANNs have been trained using extended delta-bar-delta paradigms to predict the concentration levels of oxygen, carbon monoxide, and total hydrocarbons from the transient incineration of surrogate liquid hazardous wastes. Given a sensor lag time of t, the ANNs use the measurements of the gas concentrations at the current time t and previous times t-dt and t-2dt to predict the gas concentration values at time t+dt. Since the current measurement output reflects the process state which occurred in the system at time t-dt, the ANN output value for time t+dt will be a prediction of the actual system state at time t. Time-series results are plotted for several test runs, and the performance measurement of the ANNs is given for all test runs completed. Criteria are presented for evaluating the success or failure of network training, and for identifying the need for additional network training and sensor failure.
"Development of an Artificial-Intelligence-Based System to Control Transient Emissions from Secondary Combustion Chambers of Hazardous Waste Incinerators," P.M. Lemieux C.A. Miller, K.J. Fritsky, P.J. Chappell, Paper presented at the 1995 International Incineration Conference, Seattle, WA, May 8-12, 1995.

Development of an Artificial-Intelligence-Based System to Control Transient Emissions from Secondary Combustion Chambers of Hazardous Waste Incinerators

P.M. Lemieux, C.A. Miller, K.J. Fritsky, P.J. Chappell United States Environmental Protection Agency Air and Energy Engineering Research Laboratory Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Abstract
Experiments have been performed on a 73 kW (250,000 Btu/hr) rotary kiln incinerator simulator equipped with a 73 kW secondary combustion chamber including an afterburner to develop and evaluate the performance of a dynamic system to control transient emissions from the rotary kiln by augmenting the afterburner flame with pure oxygen, injected at a rate determined by a fuzzy logic control algorithm. Liquid surrogate waste consisting of reagent grade toluene was injected into the rotating section of the natural-gas-fired kiln. The toluene was injected in a controlled transient manner, programmed to simulate the sudden release of liquid waste from a container that was batch fed into an incinerator. The investigators developed a fuzzy rule set based on system response during previous experiments with the same facility, and developed the custom process control software. The control software used signals, measured at both the kiln exit and the afterburner exit, to determine an appropriate injection rate of oxygen into the afterburner. System performance was measured by using a combined performance indicator consisting of integrated weighted mass emissions of carbon monoxide, total hydrocarbons, and soot.

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