FAir-Control - Factory Air Pollution Control

The aim of this project is to develop advanced real-time control methodologies for cost optimization of air pollutants mitigation systems. The goal is the automatic control and optimization of the feed rates of mitigation chemicals introduced into the production process (Selective Non-Catalytic Reduction), in order to control the pollutants output on the stack within the legal limits, i.e. always taking in consideration the non-violation of regulations. The main objective is to control the pollutants output on the stack within the legal limits by optimally and automatically selecting the chemicals injection rate into the cement production process, always taking in consideration the non-violation of regulations. Controlling the pollutants ration is a quite difficult problem due to the large instability of the chemicals reactions. Hence the operators work to comply to a worst case scenario, protecting themselves by injecting a quantity of chemicals much higher than needed, wasting resources and increasing the production costs. This project proposes the development of a software-based product, with embedded computational intelligence, capable of selecting the optimal chemical injection quantities for minimizing the operational cost. The base computational intelligence technology for this project is the Fuzzy Logic control. The chemical reactions generated by the chemicals introduced in the cement kiln are very complex and its effectiveness highly depends on several factors such as: temperature, pollutants concentration and dispersion of the chemicals into the gas. One other aim of this project is to develop a systems that is capable to change its strategy of injecting chemicals according to the variations in the process. To successfully achieve these objectives, it will be formed a consortium composed by 3 organizations: (1) Industrial control expert company (Acontrol), (2) Burner and kiln process expert company (Pricast), (3) University research group with expertise in advanced control and cognitive systems (UC). The impact of the project results on the process optimization, with direct reduction of factory costs, will add a high market potential to the consortium participants.