Data-driven adaptive modeling method for industrial processes and its application in flotation reagent control

In real industrial processes, new process “excitation” patterns that largely deviate from previously collected training data will appear due to disturbances caused by process inputs. To reduce model mismatch, it is important for a data-driven process model to adapt to new process “excitation” patterns. Although efforts have been devoted to developing adaptive process models to deal with this problem, few studies have attempted to develop an adaptive process model that can incrementally learn new process “excitation” patterns without performance degradation on old patterns. In this study, efforts are devoted to enabling data-driven process models with incremental learning ability. First, a novel incremental learning method is proposed for process model updating. Second, an adaptive neural network process model is developed based on the novel incremental learning method. Third, a nonlinear model predictive control based on the adaptive process model is implemented and applied for flotation reagent control. Experiments based on historical data provide evidence that the newly developed adaptive process model can accommodate new process “excitation” patterns and preserve its performance on old patterns. Furthermore, industry experiments carried out in a real-world lead–zinc froth flotation plant provide industrial evidence and show that the newly designed controller is promising for practical flotation reagent control.