Intelligent Integrated Control for Burn-Through Point to Carbon Efficiency Optimization in Iron Ore Sintering Process

The iron ore sintering process is an important step in preparing raw material for ironmaking. How to reduce carbon consumption while ensuring the stable running of the sintering process is an urgent problem to be solved. In this brief, an intelligent integrated control strategy for the burn-through point (BTP) to carbon efficiency optimization in the sintering process is presented. The comprehensive coke ratio (CCR) is employed as a measure of carbon efficiency, and the BTP is a measure of the stability of the sintering process. First, a short time scale model is established to predict the CCR, and the carbon efficiency is optimized by using the particle swarm optimization algorithm. This yields an optimal carbon efficiency and one control quantity of strand velocity. Another control quantity of strand velocity is obtained by a BTP expert-fuzzy controller. Both control quantities are integrated by a well-designed intelligent integrated controller, so that the optimal strand velocity, as the final control input, is determined. An experiment is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The experimental results show that the proposed strategy improves the carbon efficiency while ensuring the stable running of the sintering process, which has a good application prospect in the industrial site.