Expert system for fault detection and isolation of coal-shortage in thermal power plants

A two layer fault detection and isolation (FDI) system for coal-shortage detection in thermal power plant coal supply unit has been proposed. If the amount of coal reaching the burners is not sufficient enough we are facing possibly hazardous working conditions and this situation is treated as fault and has to be detected as soon as possible. Layer one of a proposed system consists of two FDI algorithms running in parallel: FDI expert system and algorithm based on fixed size hypothesis testing strategy. Residuals generated by layer one are passed to layer two expert system for evaluation and final decision on whether a coal-shortage really occurred. Two layer FDI structure is used to generate more reliable and faster FDI. Proposed system is tested with data collected from coal supply unit of block A4 of "Nikola Tesla" power plant (Obrenovac, Serbia) and results are discussed in detail.