Adaptive soft sensor based on time difference Gaussian process regression with local time-delay reconstruction

•Nonlinear behavior, time-varying characteristic and time delay feature of chemical processes are considered simultaneously.•Time-varying property of the process is dealt with effectively through moving window strategy.•The proposed method can be tailored for various modeling problems in nonlinear time-varying processes with time-delay.

Apart from strong nonlinearity and time-varying behaviors in industrial processes, the hidden time-delay information, which is unfortunately overlooked in most existing modeling methods, should also be taken into account in soft sensor modeling. In view of this, a novel soft sensor, referred to as local time-delay reconstruction based moving window time difference Gaussian process regression (LTR-MWTDGPR), is proposed in this paper. To deal with the time-delay, a fuzzy curve analysis based local time-delay parameter extraction procedure is performed along with a strategy of a moving window, which simultaneously captures the process time-varying feature. Then the local window training dataset and new query sample are reconstructed according to the time-delay parameter set at the next sampling instant. Afterwards, the time difference Gaussian process regression is employed to handle the drifting feature of local reconstructed dataset. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed LTR-MWTDGPR approach in predicting quality variables are verified through a real sulfur recovery unit and an industrial debutanizer column.