Abstract
A key energy consumption in steel metallurgy comes from an iron ore sintering process. Enhancing carbon utilization in this process is important for green manufacturing and energy saving and its prerequisite is a time-series prediction of carbon efficiency. The existing carbon efficiency models usually have a complex structure, leading to a time-consuming training process. In addition, a complete retraining process will be encountered if the models are inaccurate or data change. Analyzing the complex characteristics of the sintering process, we develop an original prediction framework, that is, a weighted kernel-based fuzzy C-means (WKFCM)-based broad learning model (BLM), to achieve fast and effective carbon efficiency modeling. First, sintering parameters affecting carbon efficiency are determined, following the sintering process mechanism. Next, WKFCM clustering is first presented for the identification of multiple operating conditions to better reflect the system dynamics of this process. Then, the BLM is built under each operating condition. Finally, a nearest neighbor criterion is used to determine which BLM is invoked for the time-series prediction of carbon efficiency. Experimental results using actual run data exhibit that, compared with other prediction models, the developed model can more accurately and efficiently achieve the time-series prediction of carbon efficiency. Furthermore, the developed model can also be used for the efficient and effective modeling of other industrial processes due to its flexible structure.