Increment-based recursive transformed component statistical analysis for monitoring blast furnace iron-making processes: An index-switching scheme

Detecting early abnormalities in blast furnaces is important for the smooth operation of the iron-making process. In this paper, recursive transformed component statistical analysis (RTCSA)-based algorithms are developed to monitor the iron-making process with the task of early abnormality detection. The increments of variables instead of the absolute measurements are used for RTCSA, in order to decrease the effect of the time-varying nature of the process. Owing to the peak-like disturbances caused by the switching of hot blast stoves, an online identification algorithm is designed to locate the disturbance intervals. Then an index-switching scheme is used for monitoring the process. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified using the real data of two blast furnaces. Compared with the conventional methods such as the two-stage principal component analysis, the increment-based RTCSA can effectively detect early abnormalities in the iron-making process.