The objective of this project is to develop, implement and test a general-purpose multi-sensor system to optimise the operation of industrial fuel-burning systems, and to control and assist the maintenance of industrial furnaces and boilers.
The objective of this project was to develop, implement and test a general purpose multisensor system to optimise the operation of industrial fuel burning systems, and to control and assist the maintenance of industrial furnaces and boilers. The project was aimed to assure optimum conditions of industrial burning systems through the maintenance of efficient flame characteristics, which are achieved with the implementation of adequate control mechanisms in 2 different levels. Low level control aims at the definition of simplified dynamic models and proper control strategies and includes sensor integration and the implementation and optimization of new sensors, either physical and chemical or optical. It has been given particular attention to the development of a vision system to acquire data on flames and to classify them according with previously learned standards. Other sensors under development included viscosity meters for heavy fuel oil and molten glass and a volumetric fuel flowmeter for fuel oil.
High level control aims at the definition and implementation of actions based on: sensorial information, specific knowledge driven by sophisticated mathematical models of the flow and heat transfer characteristics of industrial burning systems and empirical knowledge of subsystem not considered by the mathematical models.