Comparison of supervised learning techniques for atmospheric pollutant monitoring in a Kraft pulp mill

  • Authors:
  • Matthieu Sainlez;Georges Heyen

  • Affiliations:
  • CRISIA, Haute Ecole Robert Schuman, Chemin de Weyler 2, B-6700 Arlon, Belgium;LASSC, University of Liège, Sart Tilman B6A, B-4000 Liège, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

In this paper, supervised learning techniques are compared to predict nitrogen oxide (NO"x) pollutant emission from the recovery boiler of a Kraft pulp mill. Starting from a large database of raw process data related to a Kraft recovery boiler, we consider a regression problem in which we are trying to predict the value of a continuous variable. Generalization is done on the worst case configuration possible to make sure the model is adequate: the training period concerns stationary operations while test periods mainly focus on NO"x emissions during transient operations. This comparison involves neural network techniques (i.e., multilayer perceptron and NARX network), tree-based methods and multiple linear regression. We illustrate the potential of a dynamic neural approach compared to the others in this task.