Model-based monitoring and fault diagnosis of fossil power plant process units using Group Method of Data Handling

This paper presents an incipient fault diagnosis approach based on the Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH) technique. The GMDH algorithm provides a generic framework for characterizing the interrelationships among a set of process variables of fossil power plant sub-systems and is employed to generate estimates of important variables in a data-driven fashion. In this paper, ridge regression techniques are incorporated into the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator to solve regression coefficients at each layer of the GMDH network. The fault diagnosis method is applied to feedwater heater leak detection with data from an operating coal-fired plant. The results demonstrate the proposed method is capable of providing an early warning to operators when a process fault or an equipment fault occurs in a fossil power plant.