Adaptive prognostics in a controlled energy conversion process based on long- and short-term predictors

Moncef Soualhi, Mohamed El Koujok, Khanh T.P. Nguyen, Kamal Medjaher, Ahmed Ragab, Hakim Ghezzaz, Mouloud Amazouz and Mohamed-Salah Ouali

Applied Energy, 2021, vol. 283, issue C, No S0306261920314823

Abstract: The pulp and paper industry is a fundamental sector of the economy of many countries. However, this sector requires real collaboration and initiatives from stakeholders to reduce its significant consumption of energy and emission of greenhouse gases. Heat exchangers are examples of equipment in pulp mills that are subjected to undesirable and complex phenomena such as evolution of fouling over time, which leads to inefficiency in terms of energy consumption and unplanned shutdowns, resulting in ineffective maintenance strategies and production costs. Therefore, there is a clear need to develop an accurate predictive maintenance tool that helps mill operators avoid such situations. It is necessary for that tool to effectively track the fouling evolution level and, based on it, deploy a reliable prognostics approach to estimate more accurately the time-to-clean of this equipment. This study presents a new hybrid prognostics approach for fouling prediction in heat exchangers. The proposed approach relies on the fusion of information of different prediction horizons to estimate the time-to-clean. Employing long short-term memory, it allows adaptation of long-term predictions by accurate short-term predictions using multiple non-linear auto-regressive exogenous models. This fusion not only captures the changes in degradation trend over time, but also ensures a good accuracy of prognostics results in both the short- and long-term horizons for planning maintenance actions. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was successfully proven on real industrial data collected from a pulp mill heat exchanger located in Canada.

Keywords: Prognostics and health management; Black liquor conversion; Energy optimization; Heat exchanger fouling; Machine learning; Long-short term memory; Non-linear auto-regressive exogenous model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116049

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