Expert control and fault diagnosis of the leaching process in a zinc hydrometallurgy plant

Abstract This paper concerns a real-world application of an expert system to the automation of a zinc hydrometallurgy plant. The leaching process in zinc hydrometallurgy involves dissolving zinc-bearing material in dilute sulfuric acid to form a zinc sulfate solution. The key problems are to determine and track the optimal pHs of the overflows of the neutral and acid leaches, and to ensure the safe running of the process. This paper describes an expert control and fault diagnosis scheme that solves those problems. The expert control is based on a combination of steady-state mathematical models and rule models, and the fault diagnosis employs rule models with certainty factors and a Bayes representation. A real-world application of this scheme showed that it not only improved the control performance, but also correctly diagnosed faults.