REAL TIME PROCESS SIMULATOR

A real-time process simulator (RTPS) has been developed to assist the operator in on-line monitoring of the internal state of the furnace. The RTPS is a modern day tool, which works in synchronisation with the plant and provides fast real time prediction of variety of operating variables, product qualities/properties and guidance for operation and control of blast furnace process to achieve the desired objectives. It has a built-in intelligence for online recognition of the relationship between the process features and the operating conditions of the complex dynamical blast furnace operation. The RTPS can be operated in offline, online, real time or virtual real time modes providing flexibility to users for setting the required configuration, up-gradation and tuning of various process parameters on a user friendly graphical operator console.  

The RTPS system helps in process monitoring and simulation, and provides effective support in short and long term decision-making. The inner core of the RTPS for any iron making process consists of packets of steady state and dynamic models of the plant, mathematical libraries, optimization and control libraries, artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic based modules. These core modules facilitate the mapping of input/output behavior, internal state estimation and prediction for industrially important furnace process variables. The irregularities in the process such as hanging, scaffolding etc. in the blast furnace are predicted using fuzzy logic based heuristic schemes. In addition, it also comprises open loop synthesis modules, real time modules for various raw data based process calculations, k-step a head prediction scheme based on moving horizon concept and scheme to estimate states, which are difficult to measure. These modules form the knowledge base of RTPS structure and provide real time information to govern various manipulated and control process variables based on measured data. The outer core of RTPS consists of a graphical user interface (GUI) based operator station. It is an expert shell, which supervises and co-ordinates between the sophisticated software in the background and the user through a user-friendly graphical utility. The GUI provides the special display and trends of process calculation parameters analyzed in real time in synchronization with the plant. 

The RTPS is interfaced with the existing plant Distributed Control System (DCS)/Data Acquisition System (DAS) using client-server architecture. The architecture has source, database and presentation layers, which can be visualised in either a conceptual or a physical manner. The TCP/IP protocol has been used for communication between client and server machines for hand shaking and smooth data transfer. The client/server application runs the client processes separately from the server processes, usually on a different computer.