An Expert System for Boiler Surface Fouling Assessment

DOI: 10.1615/ICHMT.1992.ExpSystComputSimEnergEngin.350
pages 219-224

Naim Hamdia Afgan
Instituto Superior Tecnico Department of Mechanical Engineering Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon Portugal

P. Radovanovic
Boris Kidric Nuclear Sciences Institute, Belgrade,Yugoslavia

A. G. Bloch
Central Boiler Turbine Institute, St.Peterburg, Russia

Abstract

The paper describes the concept of an expert system for boiler surface fouling assessment to be used in a pilot experiment on a 300 MWe power plant fired with lignite coal. The expert system consists of a set of heat flux instruments with clean and notcleaned fluxmeters, a data acquisition system with subsystems for data validation and conversion to appropriate symbolic representation and a knowledge base with corresponding inference engine.
Selected points of the boiler furnace surface area are instrumented with fluxmeters and used as a test sample for pattern recognition of the specific processes leading to the scaling of ash solid layer on the boiler heating surface. The knowledge base consists of decision rules that enable inference of recommendations for appropriate actions to be taken in specific events in the power plant. The rules have been formulated in cooperation with the operating staff of steam power plants.