730 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO.
4, OCTOBER 2009
Intelligent Optimal-Setting Control for Grinding
Circuits of Mineral Processing Process
Ping Zhou, Tianyou Chai, Fellow, IEEE, and Hong Wang, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—During the operation of a grinding circuit (GC) in
mineral processing plant the main purpose of control and optimal
operation is to control the product quality index, namely the
product particle size, into its technically desired ranges. Moreover,
the grinding production rate needs to be maximized. However,
due to the complex dynamic characteristics between the above
two indices and the control loops, such control objectives are
difficult to achieve using existing control methods. The complexity
is reflected by the existence of process heavy nonlinearities, strong
coupling and large time variations. As a result, the lower level loop
control with human supervision is still widely used in practice.
However, since the setpoints to the involved control loops cannot
be accurately adjusted under the variations of the boundary
conditions, the manual setpoints control cannot ensure that the
actual production indices meet with technical requirements all the
time. In this paper, an intelligent optimal-setting control (IOSC)
approach is developed for a typical two-stage GC so as to optimize
the production indices by auto-adjusting on line the setpoints of
the control loops in response to the changes in boundary condi-
tions. This IOSC approach integrates case-based reasoning (CBR)
pre-setting controlling, neural network (NN)-based soft-sensor
and fuzzy adjusting into one efficient control model. Although each
control element is well known, their innovative combination can
generate better and more reliable performance. Both industrial
experiments and applications show the validity and effectiveness
of the proposed IOSC approach and its bright application fore-
ground in industrial processes with similar features.
Note to Practitioners—From a process engineering point of
view, the purpose of GC control should not only achieve a perfect
tracking of the controlled variables with respect to their setpoints,
but also realize the optimization of production indices, namely the
product particle size and the grinding production rate. However,
these production indices cannot be optimized solely by the lower
level control systems (LLCS) because of the process complexity
and time-varying nature of the grinding operation. As a result,
the operator is needed to determine the setpoints of each control
loop of the LLCS using operational experience. Unfortunately,
the manual operation cannot ensure that the actual production
Manuscript received December 29, 2007; revised August 20, 2008. First
published April 24, 2009; current version published September 30, 2009.
This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor Z. Gao and
Editor M. Y. Wang upon evaluation of the reviewers comments. This work was
supported in part by the National Basic Research Program of Program of China
under Grant 2009CB320600, in part by the State Key Program of National
Natural Science of China under Grant 60534010, in part by the National
High-Tech Program under Grants 2006AA04Z179 and 2007AA041405, and
in part by the Funds for Creative Research Groups of China under Grant
60521003, and in part by the 111 Project B08015.
P. Zhou and T. Y. Chai are with the Key Laboratory of Integrated Automation
of Process Industry, Ministry of Education, Northeastern University, 110004
Shenyang, China, and also with the Research Center of Automation, North-
eastern University, 110004 Shenyang, China (e-mail: tychai@mail.neu.edu.cn).
H. Wang is with the Control System Center, Manchester University, Man-
chester, M60, 1QD, U.K.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASE.2008.2011562
1545-5955/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
indices meet with technical requirements. In this paper, an IOSC
approach is developed for the GC so as to optimize the concerned
production indices. In a detailed description, this IOSC approach
is composed of a case-based reasoning (CBR)-based loop pre-set-
ting controller, a NN based particle size soft-sensor module and a
fuzzy adjustor, and is used to auto-adjust the setpoints of lower
level controllers under the varying boundary conditions. As long
as the outputs of the LLCS track their renewed setpoints, the
process can optimize the production indices and achieve the de-
sired performance of the system. The proposed approach has been
successfully applied to the grinding process of a large hematite
mineral processing plant in China. It is believed that the results of
this paper can be extended to a wide range of processes with the
similar feature that the production indices cannot be optimized
solely by the human supervised LLCS.
Index Terms—Case-based reasoning (CBR), fuzzy inference,
grinding circuit, grinding production rate, intelligent optimal-set-
ting control, neural network (NN), product particle size.
I. INTRODUCTION
N mineral processing, a grinding circuit (GC) is used to re-
I duce the particle size of the ore such that the valuable min-
eral constituent is exposed and can be recovered in the subse-
quent beneficiation operation. During the operation of the GC,
there are two important production indices namely product par-
ticle size (PPS) and grinding production rate (GPR). These two
indices represent the grinding product quality and the efficiency
of the grinding production; therefore, they need to be controlled
effectively.
Generally, the PPS needs to be controlled within a desired
range suitable for the subsequent beneficiation process. Under
this precondition, the GPR needs to be maximized. However,
these production indices are normally difficult to measure on-
line and are closely related to the setpoints of the lower-level
control loops. The involved dynamical characteristics are com-
plicated in terms of heavy nonlinearities and strong coupling.
In general, accurate models are difficult to obtain because these
models vary largely in line with changes in boundary conditions.
As such, it is difficult to implement the feedback control by a
general control method, such as multi-loop PI/PID control [1].
On-site engineers and operators are therefore needed to deter-
mine the setpoints of each control loop based on their experi-
ence together with the visual inspection on the operation status
of the grinding system. Unfortunately, manual operation cannot
accurately define these setpoints in time when the boundary con-
ditions change. As a result, manual operation cannot ensure that
the actual production indices meet with technical requirements
all the time [2]–[7].
An optimal-setting control scheme, which is proposed for
improving product quality and production efficiency, has been
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of grinding circuits system.
paid more and more attention in control of complicated in-
dustrial processes [2], [4]–[7]. The so-called “optimal-setting
control” scheme, which generally includes a higher level loop
setting layer and a lower level loop control layer, is designed
to determine the setpoints for the lower level loop controllers
under the varying boundary conditions. As long as the outputs
of the lower level control system track the given setpoints,
the process can optimize the production indices and achieve
desired performance of the system. The existing hierachical
optimal-setting control methods or similar hierachical setting
control strategies for a GC include many algorithms, such as
model based supervisory control, model-based self-optimiza-
tion control, steady-state linear programming based real-time
optimal control (RTO), linear model predictive control (MPC)
and other model based control methods [8]–[13]. However, it
is hard to obtain the accurate objective function and process
model of the grinding system in practice. Very few of the above
model-based methods currently operate in industry due to the
complex process dynamics and severe disturbances in a GC,
most of them have only been tested at simulation level or at
experimental level. Therefore, in recent years, some knowledge
engineering based control methods [14]–[16] have been pro-
posed and successfully applied to the practical grinding system
due to their loose requirement on the process model and their
capability to use human experience.
However, the above mentioned references or control methods
pertain to a GC, which consists of a ball mill and a hydrocyclone.
So far, little attention has been paid to the type of GC consisting
of a ball mill and a spiral classifier, which is widely used in
China. The dynamic behavior is quite different from the com-
monly seen GC where cyclones are used because the apparatus,
the actuators and the basic control loops employed are quite dif-
ferent. Moreover, for the grinding process in China, the quality
of the raw ore cannot be guaranteed and production condition is
execrable. Therefore, the boundary conditions change sharply in
the processing procedure. As a result, it is hard to use the above
optimal control methods to achieve optimal setting control of
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
731
grinding process with the above difficulties which are typically
seen in China. In fact, the PID based lower level control strategy
with human supervision is still widely used in the control of a
GC.
In this paper, an intelligent optimal-setting control (IOSC)
approach is developed for one of the typical Chinese styles of
GCs to optimize the concerned production indices. This IOSC
system consists of a case-based reasoning (CBR) [6], [17] based
loop pre-setting controller, a neural network (NN) [3] based PPS
soft-sensor module and a fuzzy [3], [18] adjustor. It can re-
place the human operators by auto-adjusting the setpoints for the
lower level loop controllers under variations of boundary con-
ditions. The viability and effectiveness of the proposed IOSC
approach are presented in both industrial experiments and ap-
plications in a two-stage GC of a hematite concentration plant
in China.
II. GRINDING CIRCUIT SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
A. Process Description
The majority of the iron ore processed by mineral processing
plants in China is low-grade hematite. Because such ore is
of complex mineral composition and fine dissemination par-
ticle size, weakly magnetic and hard grindability, the general
one-stage grinding procedure does not grind them effectively.
Therefore, a two-stage closed-loop grinding circuit is gener-
ally adopted to grind the ore so as to break up and liberate it
more effectively. Such a grinding circuit usually consists of
two closed circuits, which is shown in Fig. 1. The first stage
GC called GC I forms a closed-circuit with a ball mill and a
spiral classifier. The second stage GC called GC II forms a
closed-circuit with the other ball mill and a hydrocyclone.
The variables in Fig. 1 are explained as follows:
fresh ore feed rate (t/h);
pulp density in the mill I (%);
cyclone feed pressure (Kpa);
 732 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009
sump level (m);
ratio of the classifier recycle ore to the fresh
feed ore (%);
flurry density of the classifier overflow, the
classifier recycle, the cyclone feed and the
cyclone overflow (%);
rate of the mill water, the dilution water, and
the sump water (m /h);
frequency of the feeder motor and the bump
motor (Hz);
valve position of the mill water, the dilution
water, and the sump water (%);
drive motor electricity of the mill I, the mill
II, and the classifier (A);
TD transducer;
controller and instrument;
W-, P-, F-, L-, weighing, pressure, flow rate, level, density,
D-, E- and electricity;
superscript setpoint of relative control loop.
The fresh ore from an ore bin is fed onto a conveyer belt by
a vibratory feeder at a certain speed, and then conveyed con-
tinuously into the ball mill I, together with a certain amount of
mill water. The ball mill is a cylindrical shell rotating around its
axis at a fixed speed driven by a motor, with heavy metallic balls
called grinding media inside the cylinder. Due to the knocking
and tumbling action of the balls within the revolving mill, ores
are crush to finer particles [8]. By means of its fluidity, a con-
tinuous flow of the mixed ore slurry is discharged from mill I,
diluted by the dilution water, and then flows into the lower end
of the spiral classifier, which is used to separate the fine and
coarse particles. The coarser particles (called recycle) are en-
riched at the bottom, transported to the upper end of the spiral
classifier and then recycled back to mill I for regrinding. The
finer particles (the product of GC I) in the slurry overflow across
the overflow weir and are then transported to the sump of GC
II. The slurry entering the sump contains the discharged slurry
from the ball mill II. In addition, to maintain a certain density, a
certain amount of water flow (called sump water) is added into
the sump. The slurry of the sump is pumped into the cyclone at
a constant pressure. The feed stream to the cyclone is separated
into an overflow stream containing the finer particles and an un-
derflow stream containing the coarser particles (recycle). The
underflow is recycled back to the mill II for regrinding, while the
overflow is the final product of this grinding procedure, which
is transported to the subsequent beneficiation procedure.
B. Control Problem Analysis
In the above GC, there are two important production indices
namely the PPS and the GPR which cannot be measured con-
tinuously. The PPS, which is usually characterized by %
mesh, is the most important quality index that directly affects the
performance of the subsequent beneficiation process in terms of
product concentrate grade and metal recovery rate. The GRP,
which is usually expressed by throughput of mill I and mill op-
erative ratio (the percent of the mill available time to the pro-
duction calendar time), is another important index that directly
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
relates to the production rate of the overall mineral processing
process.
For a given beneficiation process, there exist an optimal range
of PPS within which the best beneficiation can be achieved.
Oversizing and undersizing are disadvantageous for the bene-
ficiation of the valuable minerals and have a negative economic
impact. Therefore, in contrast to the conventional fixed value
control, control of the PPS needs to employ range optimal con-
trol strategy, which means to control the PPS within the desired
range , where is the setpoint or desired
value of the PPS, and is the allowed fluctuation coefficient.
Under the precondition that the PPS has been controlled within
the desired range, the GPR needs to be increased as high as pos-
sible. Moreover, if the PPS can be controlled within the desired
range and the GPR is increased synchronously, then energy is
considered to be utilized effectively.
For the above grinding process, there are two product quality
indices namely the product particle size of cyclone overflow
slurry (called PPSh) and the product particle size of spiral clas-
sifier overflow slurry (called PPSc). The PPSc expresses the
product quality of GC I, and the PPSh is the final product quality
index of the whole grinding process. The fineness of the PPSh is
closely related to the PPSc during the grinding process. There-
fore, the PPSc and the PPSh should be controlled effectually so
as to meet with technical requirements.
According to the physical phenomena taking place in the
grinding process, the main process variables available to achieve
the above control objective are the fresh ore feed rate , the
classifier overflow slurry density , the pulp density in the
mill I , the cyclone feed slurry density , and the cyclone
feed pressure . Therefore, the above indices can be optimized
through adjusting such key process variables. In addition, the
major disturbances to the GC that affect the system performance
are the fluctuation in ore hardness and size distribution
of the feed ores. For example, an increase in either the feed
size or the ore hardness produces a coarser PPS unless the feed
ore rate is correspondingly reduced. Conversely, a decrease in
feed size or hardness may allow an increase in mill throughput,
thus the production rate is improved. Because of the difficul-
ties in measuring and numerically expressing and , five
ordered figures are utilized to demarcate the
linguistic variables large, relatively large, medium, relatively
small, small for and bad, relatively bad, medium, rela-
tively good, good for .
C. Process Characteristic Analysis
The grinding system as shown in Fig. 1 has some inherent
intricate characteristics.
• First, because the mills, the spiral classifier, the cyclone,
the sump, and some conveying equipments all are the typ-
ical time delay technical equipments, large lag-time exists
in this grinding process. Indeed, it is a long period from the
fresh ore feeding into the mill I to the PPSh index being
measured in the overflow slurry of cyclone.
• Second, the system response is complex, the characteristics
of this process vary with time, which results in variability,
serious nonlinear and severe coupling between variables.
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS
• Third, the main boundary conditions, such as and ,
change sharply, which brings strong disturbances in con-
trol. In addition, many equipment structure parameters of
the GC, such as grinding media, dimensions of metal spi-
rals and diameters of cyclone feed, overflow, and under-
flow, are related with time, which can therefore change the
dynamic behavior of grinding system.
• Fourth, some production indices and key process parame-
ters cannot be directly measured or controlled, such as the
PPSc, the PPSh, the mill throughput and the density of the
pulp in the mill I .
• Lastly, GC I and GC II are physically closed-loop, which
has two major drawbacks of risk of process instability and
low sensitivities when estimating variables/parameters
from measurements.
D. Human Supervised Lower Level Control System
The lower level control system (LLCS) based on the dis-
tributed control system (DCS) technique is responsible for
forcing key process variables that are available to achieve
the above control objective to track the given setpoints while
assuring closed-loop stability.
The main control loops of the LLCS are shown in Fig. 1.
In a detailed description, these control loops include the single
control loop of , the cascade control loop of , the feed-
forward loop of , the cascade control loop of and the single
control loop of . The controlled variables, the manipulated
variables, and the major instruments and actuators of each loop
are shown in Fig. 1.
Moreover, to keep the sump from emptying and overflowing,
a local control loop to control the sump level is used. Since
is allowed to change within its constraints, a loose control
is carried out, which allows the level to fluctuate in a larger
range. From Fig. 1, it can be seen that the loop of and the
local loop of form a selective control scheme. If is within
its constraints, the loop of is at work and the loop of is
switched off. Otherwise, the loop of will be switched off and
the loop of will be switched on.
Among these regulatory control loops, PID control strategies
are mainly applied, which have the advantages of simple struc-
ture, good stability and robustness [16]. However, considering
that cannot be measured directly, an empirical model-based
feed-forward controller shown in (1) is employed for the
control [6]
(1)
where and are usually demarcated by the domain experts
according to the technical characteristics of the given GC.
To maintain satisfactory performance, technical engineers are
always required, as shown in Fig. 2, to determine the proper set-
points for the lower level controllers according to their perceived
operating conditions and boundary conditions. Such human su-
pervision can be summarized as follows:
• to obtain and process the data from the operating grinding
system by employing instruments together with the visual
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
733
Fig. 2. Human supervised grinding system.
or audial inspection on the running status of the grinding
system;
• to establish the adjustment relationships between the set-
points of the loop controllers and the controlled errors of
the production indices, and the internal relationships be-
tween the setpoints of the loop controllers, according to
human experience;
• to determine the proper setpoints for LLCS.
The variables in Fig. 2 are explained as follows.
operating conditions where subscript “I” denotes
the GC I and subscript “II” denotes the GC II;
boundary conditions;
desired values of the PPS;
actual values or sampled value of the PPS.
III. STRATEGY OF IOSC FOR GRINDING SYSTEM
If the boundary conditions are stable and operators have ex-
tensive operational experience, the above human operation can
achieve the desired indices in time. Unfortunately, the boundary
conditions commonly vary with time. Moreover, a sole operator
is sometimes lack of adequate operational experience. Those
factors make it difficult for the operator to obtain the proper op-
erating point, thus being a key disadvantage for the final indices.
Motivated by the above problems, an IOSC scheme is pro-
posed in this paper by adopting the hybrid intelligent techniques
such as CBR, ANN, and fuzzy inference. Based on the LLCS,
a framework for the IOSC system, consisting of a CBR-based
loop pre-setting controller (LPSC), an ANN-based PPS soft-
sensor module (PSSM) and a fuzzy adjustor (FA), is established
as shown in Fig. 3. This IOSC system is intended to replace the
human operator by auto-adjusting the setpoints for the LLCS
under variations of boundary conditions. The major components
of the system are described as follows.
• The LPSC online provides the proper pre-setpoints for
the lower level controllers with CBR technique.
• The PSSM overcomes the difficulty that the PPS in-
dices cannot be measured online continuously using
 734 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009

Fig. 3. Strategy diagram of intelligent optimal-setting control.

conventional methods, through employing the soft-sensor
technique to generate the estimated value of PPS.
• The FA consisting of a main adjustor and an auxiliary ad-
justor is used to compensate the effects of the variation in
boundary conditions according to the operating environ-
ment.
The variables in Fig. 3 are explained as follows:
soft-sensor time and assaying time;
some secondary variables of
soft-sensor model I and soft-sensor
model II;
estimated values of the PPS;
errors between and ;
errors between and ;
pre-setpoints of the lower level
controller;
setpoints of the lower level con-
troller;
adjusted increments of , sub-
script “M” and “A” denote main
adjusting and auxiliary adjusting,
respectively.
At the initial running of the grinding system or at the time that
boundary conditions are changed sharply, the CBR-based LPSC
will check the most similar case from the case base with the
characteristic variables of the current grinding system, such as
desired values of PPS, operating conditions and boundary
conditions . The case solutions of the most similar case will
be regarded as the pre-setpoints and provided for the lower level
controllers. Then, the LPSC will be switched off, and the PSSM
will be switched on. If the estimated or is outside the
desired range , the main adjustor of the FA will
be switched on, and in response to the error between
and so as to yield the compensating increments for the
formal setpoints of lower controllers by using an algorithm that
can enhance GPR effectively. Moreover, offline assays provide
the PPS indices and give the sampled values periodically, and
the auxiliary adjustor of the FA will carry out some selective
adjusting to the grinding system according to the values of
and some other necessary information.
It can be seen from the above elaboration that the innovative
combination of the LPSC, the FA, the PSSM, and the LLCS
poses a closed-loop control methodology for the PPS from the
lower level to the higher level, which is difficult for traditional
control methods to achieve. Moreover, the GPR can also be in-
creased.
IV. REALIZATION OF IOSC SYSTEM
A. ANN-Based PPS Soft-Sensor Module
The key problem of closed-loop control of the PPS is that it
cannot be measured continuously with conventional methods.
Employing soft-sensor technique [19] to online estimate the
PPS is the most effective method to overcome it. Among the ex-
isting soft-sensor approaches of the PPS, the NN-based method
and the ARMAX model-based method [19]–[22] have been ap-
plied widely. The ARMAX model lacks robustness, however the
NN model has not only good robust but also requires less exper-
tise from the user. Moreover, the NN model is able to capture the
underlying characteristics of the process over a wide range of
operation [22]. Therefore, the NN-based soft-sensor approach
is employed to develop a PSSM in this paper. Moreover, among
the numerous types of NN, radial basis function (RBF) network
is chosen because of its fast convergence and good approxima-
tion ability to multivariable functions.
The developed PSSM consists of a soft-sensor model I and
a soft-sensor model II. These two sub-soft-sensor models have
three-layer RBF-NN structures, and, respectively, realize the
nonlinear mappings as follows:
(2)

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS
(3)
where and are unknown nonlinear equations,
= and are selected
secondary variables by mechanism analysis. For soft-sensor
model I, are the manipulated variables that affect the
PPSc mostly. and , which respectively reflect loading
status of the mill I and recycle status of the spiral classifier,
are the two state variables that relate to the PPSc closely. For
soft-sensor model II, and are the manipulated variables
that affect on the PPSh, and is selected because it is closely
related to the PPSh. In addition, to capture the system dynamics,
the time series and time delays of the relevant input and output
variables have been taken into account in (2) and (3).
1) RBF Network Learning Algorithm: The number of hidden
layer nodes of the RBF-NN is determined by the basis func-
tion centers. Therefore, the basis function center values are im-
portant to the nonlinear mapping ability of the RBF-NN. The
centers of the RBF network are usually determined by the clus-
tering analysis methods, such as the -means clustering algo-
rithm and the competitive learning algorithm. This paper em-
ploys the -means clustering algorithm because it is based upon
a linear learning rule and thus ensures a rapid convergence [3].
The output layer of RBF-NN is a linear combination of the
hidden layer node outputs. Therefore, the weighted recursive
least-square (RLS) [3], [23] is employed as a learning algorithm
for the RBF model. Unlike a back-propagation algorithm, only
output weights are tuned when learning, which can reduce cou-
pling effects in the multivariable process and speed up the con-
vergence. The detailed algorithms of the -means clustering and
weighted RLS could be consulted in [3], [23].
2) Data Preprocessing: If the original secondary variables
are used for soft-sensor modeling and computing directly, it will
cause adverse influence on soft-sensor precision. Therefore, a
digital filtering technique is employed to preprocess these orig-
inal data in this paper. First, a noise peak filtering algorithm [24]
is used to eliminate the noise peak jump, which usually exists
in the grinding system. Then, an average moving filtering algo-
rithm [24] is used to eliminate the lower amplitude and higher
frequency noise fluctuations. The details of these two filtering
algorithm can be consulted in [24].
B. CBR-Based Loop Pre-Setting Controller
The LPSC simulates the human operator and online generates
the pre-setpoints for the lower level controllers according
to the information of and . To reduce the time delay
and coupling effects between the GC I and the GC II, two sub
pre-setting models, namely the loop pre-setting model I and the
loop pre-setting model II, are established to provide
for GC I and for GC II, respectively. Therefore,
they, respectively, realize the mappings as follows:
(4)
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
735
Fig. 4. Reasoning flow of the CBR-based LPSC.
(5)
In (4) and (5), and reflect the loading status of the
mill I and the mill II, respectively; reflects the recycle status
of the spiral classifier; and stand for some restriction
conditions, such as the valve position and bounds of some key
process variables.
1) Statistical Process Control (SPC): Because the operating
conditions will fluctuate all the time even if the grinding system
is stable, SPC [3], [24], [25] is required to carry out statistic
analysis of relevant variables of operating conditions. The SPC
actually performs the human perception function, which can be
defined as
(6)
where is the number of samples, which depends on the sam-
pling interval.
2) Realizing Arithmetic of CBR: Case-based reasoning
(CBR) is suitable to the cases where precise physical models on
the concerned process are not available. It is usually designed as
automated problem-solvers for producing a solution to a given
problem by adapting the solution to a similar, previously solved
problem [17]. In this paper, the CBR technique is adopted to
realize the nonlinear mappings in (4) and (5) for the LPSC. The
reasoning flow of CBR-based LPSC is shown in Fig. 4, which
mainly includes case retrieval and case matching, case reuse,
and case revision and case retention.
a) Case Representation: Before starting the reasoning
flow as shown in Fig. 4, a procedure of case representation
is necessary. The case representation of the LPSC can be
described as follows:
(7)
where is the number of the cases, denotes
case, denotes the case time (the time of case created), de-
notes case descriptor, which can be expressed as (8) by under-
 736 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009

standing of the grinding process, denotes case solution shown FA, and generate the adjusting increments for . Then,
in (9) as follows: take instead of the case solution of the formal
matching case . Finally, store this revised new case.

(8) C. Fuzzy-Based FA
In the grinding production, the main boundary conditions
(9) are time-varying, which may result in the operating point of
grinding system drifting away gradually. Therefore, to avoid the
where and are the number of the attributes of and , re- effect of the variation in boundary conditions to the final pro-
spectively. From (8) and (9), it can be obtained that duction indices, an adjustment mechanism is required to modify
for GC I and for GC II. Among the at- the setpoints of the lower level controllers in time. Because of
tributes of and and are ordered attributes (OA), and the intricate characteristics of the GC, the traditional adjusting
others all are numerical attributes (NA). methods based on an accurate mathematical model cannot be
b) Case Retrieval and Case Matching: Suppose that the applied here. However, the experience and the knowledge of
description characteristics of the current grinding system is human operators provide a good qualitative approach for this ad-
. Define the case similarity between the justment mechanism, the fuzzy inference technique could there-
current grinding system and the th case of the fore be employed to solve this adjusting problem.
case base as , which is given by The developed fuzzy adjustor (FA) consists of a main adjustor
and an auxiliary adjustor. These two sub adjustors realize the
following multivariable nonlinear mappings, respectively

(10)
(13)

where is the description similarity (14)

between and , coefficients denote case feature weights
attained by expert experience. where denote unknown multivariable nonlinear
The cases that satisfy the following condition functions, and are some relative influence factors.
1) The Main Adjustor: To simulate the moving average fea-
tures of the human perception of input signals, the transitory
outputs of the soft-sensor model should be processed sta-
tistically by SPC before being used by the FA. In this paper, this
(11) process is defined as

will be retrieved as the matching cases with ranking in de-

scending order of and , where is the threshold (15)
of case similarity and threshold is determined by expert
experience, for instance.
c) Case Reuse: Suppose that the matching cases are To reduce the coupling effects between GC I and GC II, it
with being the number of is necessary to adjust GC I and GC II separately. The module
matching cases. The case solution of can be obtained by structure of the main adjustor is shown in Fig. 5, which consists
of a fuzzy inference machine, a fuzzy rule base, a database, a
knowledge acquisition interface and a coordination mechanism.
or The functions of the front four modules are similar to conven-
(12) tional fuzzy inferences systems. The coordination mechanism is
else employed to provide an adjusting scheme that can enhance the
GPR with a desired product quality using rule-based reasoning.
where (if ) or (if ). However, the definite adjusting magnitudes are calculated by the
To ensure a valid , before exporting and executing , it following fuzzy inference algorithms. The operational rules of
is necessary to restrict it using the bounds of these variables. the coordination mechanism is shown in Table I, where and
d) Case Revision and Case Retention: After the grinding stand for positive adjusting, negative adjusting, and no ad-
system obtains the solution as the pre-setpoints for the justing, respectively.
LLCS, if the result of system running is that or Let the clear variables of and be fuzzified as
, it confirms that the formerly provided is follows: define seven fuzzy sets in the universe of , define
reasonable. Therefore, there is no need to carry out case revi- three fuzzy sets in the universe of and define nine singleton
sion. Otherwise, it needs to revise the case. First, switch on the fuzzy sets in the universe of . The membership functions

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS 737

TABLE I
OPERATIONAL RULES OF THE COORDINATION MECHANISM

TABLE II
EXPRESSIONS OF 12 AND 

According to the domain expert knowledge, fuzzy rule bases

for adjusting are established as shown in Table III. These fuzzy
rules could be expressed as the following fuzzy IF-THEN rule:

where denotes the fuzzy IF-THEN rule,

, the codes
NL, NB, NM, NS, etc., are commonly used abbreviations for
Fig. 5. Structure of fuzzy-based main adjustor.
fuzzy sets, that N stands for negative, P stands for positive, ZO
stands for zero, S stands for small, M stands for medium, B
stands for big, and L stands for larger than big.
To obtain the clear solutions of , the center of gravity
method is utilized to defuzzify, which can be expressed as (16),
where weights are the fitness values of each rule and cal-
culated by the product algorithm.

(16)

The renewed setpoints of lower level controllers can be es-

tablished by using added to the formal setpoints.
2) The Auxiliary Adjustor: The function of the auxiliary ad-
justor is to realize the multivariable nonlinear mapping in (14).
Fig. 6. Membership functions of 4s ; and 42 . The assay process of the PPS usually is implemented at an in-
terval of one hour. Therefore, the auxiliary adjustment is post-
adjusting, and thus is selective. If the current grinding system
of these defined fuzzy sets are shown in Fig. 6. The expres- is stable and is always within the controllable range
sions of and are listed in Table II, where , it should not implement auxiliary adjustment. Or
are relative coefficients. Moreover, considering that and else, if the current system is unstable, or is outside the range
are sensitive to ore properties, import factors of and all the time, it needs to carry out the auxiliary
are used for the expression of in the second row of the adjustment. The detailed realization arithmetic of the auxiliary
Table II. adjustor is similar to the main adjustor.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 738 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009
FUZZY ADJUSTING RULE BASES FOR
Fig. 7. General structure of the IOSC-based hierarchical control system.
V. INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENT AND APPLICATION
A large mineral processing plant in China has an annual pro-
cessing capability for five hundred million tons of low-grade
(around 33%) hematite. Since such ore has a complicated min-
eral composition and fine dissemination particle size, weakly
magnetic and hard grindability, eight parallel two-stage closed-
circuit GCs with the same process as shown in Fig. 1 was used
to grind the ore so as to break up and liberate them effectively.
In the past, the management and control of the grinding proce-
dure are handled by human operators which resulted in redun-
dant personnel, low efficiency, and high cost.
Considering the actual condition, the hierarchical automa-
tion system is built adopting the proposed IOSC method. The
general structure of developed hierarchical control system is
shown in Fig. 7. The Controllogix 5000 control system from
Rockwell was applied for the lower level control. Controllogix
5000 is a multifunctional industrial control system widely used
in industrial process control. A human–computer interaction
monitoring platform was developed for human supervision by
utilizing RSView32 software from Rockwell. The higher level
IOSC system composed by the LPSC, the PSSM and the FA is
completed with the Visual Basic Application (VBA) language
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
TABLE III
1o 1
; d ; 1d ; 1d AND 1p
supported by RSView32. The VBA has the same integrated de-
velopment environment (IDE) as VB 6.0, and can realize com-
munication and data exchange with the LLCS and other appli-
cation languages expediently, such as Matlab, Microsoft Office
Access, and Visual Foxpro. Matlab is used to perform some nec-
essary calculating online, Access and Foxpro are used to de-
velop the case base and other data bases for the IOSC system.
A. An Industrial Experiment
The IOSC strategy was evaluated first in the No. 4 grinding
circuit. A number of industrial experiments were carried out
in order to explore the optimization of production indices. A
typical test was noted as follows.
For this No. 4 grinding circuit, to meet with the technical
requirements, the PPSh needs to be controlled within the
range 76%–80% mesh and the PPSc needs to be con-
trolled within the range 56%–60% mesh. The common
boundary conditions are listed in Table IV. Each 80 groups of
previous experiential data are selected to develop the Microsoft
Office Access based case base for loop pre-setting model I
and loop pre-setting model II, and the determined case feature
weights are listed in Table V. The soft-sensor intervals of the
PSSM are determined as 2 min. More than 300 groups of data
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS 739

TABLE IV
COMMON RESTRICTION CONDITIONS

TABLE V
CASE FEATURE WEIGHTS OF THE LPSC

TABLE VI
UNIVERSES OF 12 12 ; ; AND  (THE NUMBERS IN BRACKET ARE THE VALUES OF COEFFICIENT  )

points corresponding to 10 h of process operation were gener- At min, observe that % mesh and
ated. After preprocessing of these original data, the front 180 % mesh, this indicates that is too fine and
groups of the sampled data were used for training the RBF-NN, is eligible. Thus, the FA is switched on to carry out some
and then the latter 120 groups of data were used to test. At last, calculations as follows.
a 7 (input layer nodes)-17 (hidden layer nodes)-1 (output layer • To calculate the error % mesh, and to
nodes) RBF-NN for soft-sensor model I and a 6-13-1 RBF-NN read the information of % from the LLCS.
for soft-sensor model II are obtained. During the modeling of • To make the decision-making of increasing according
the FA, the universes of and take their true values, to the operational rule 2 in Table I.
the universes of and are determined in • From the membership functions in Fig. 6 and the uni-
Table VI, and determined as . The procedure of this verses in Table VI, obtain , and
industrial experiment is shown as follows. . From the fuzzy rule bases in Table III,
At a given time, a set of pre-setpoints shown in Table VII obtain .
have been provided for the lower level controllers by the CBR- • Employ (16) to defuzzify, we can obtain t/h.
based LPSC according to the obtained description character- • To renew the setpoint of the loop of ore fresh feed rate as
istics (shown in Table VII) of the operating grinding system. t/h.
After the system reaches steady state, the control effect curves After the above fuzzy adjusting, the FA is switched off, and
of PPS with IOSC are protracted in Fig. 8 since min. By the grinding system gradually enters the controllable status that
comparing the estimated with the sampled at the sampling time and again. Such
points of min, min, min, results show the effectiveness of the FA.
min, min, min, min, When min, observe that % mesh
min, and min in the Fig. 8, the good estimation perfor- and % mesh, which indicates that is
mance of PSSM has been demonstrated, which also can be seen too coarse. Thus, the FA is switched on again. From Rule 6 in
in Table VIII. This indicates that the PSSM can meet the accu- Table I: decrease and increase . From the multivariable
racy requirement of closed-loop control of the PPS. As shown fuzzy inference algorithm, the setpoints of these two loop con-
in Fig. 8, under the initial operating point given by the LPSC, trollers are renewed as % kPa, respec-
and are all within the desired range from tively. Then, and fluctuate slightly because of the variety
min to min. Such results show the validity of the of boundary conditions; however, they only change within the
LPSC. desired range at the rest time of experiments.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 740 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009

Fig. 8. Control effect of the PPS with IOSC. In this experiment, the sampled of the PPS is provided by assaying in laboratory. The interval of sampling is 1 h.
The estimated of the PPS is weighted averages of the soft-sensor outputs within 10 min, which obtained by (15). The zone between two dash-dotted lines is the
desired range of the PPS.

TABLE VII
DESCRIPTION CHARACTERISTICS F AND PRE-SETPOINTS 2OF THE OPERATING GRINDING SYSTEM IN EXPERIMENT

Through the above industrial experiments as long as 540 min,
the actual values of the PPSc and the PPSh are all controlled
within their desired ranges. Moreover, the ore fresh feed rate
is increased 2.9 t/h, which means that the GPR is improved.
Such experiment results show the effectiveness and validity of
the proposed IOSC.
B. Some Application Results and Comparisons
The results of the above industrial experiments show the good
control performance of the PPS; therefore, the proposed IOSC
approach can be extended to apply in the grinding procedure of
this mineral processing plant. At present, the developed control
system based on the IOSC approach has been applied in this
concentration plant for more than two years. The application
effects can be shown from following statistical figures and data.
Figs. 9 and 10 show the comparisons of control effect of the
PPSc and the PPSh in terms of human supervision scheme and
IOSC scheme, respectively. Compared with human supervi-
sion, the values of sampled PPSc and PPSh with IOSC have
smaller fluctuation scope, and are almost within the desired
range. Moreover, the long time running data also show that
the statistical average of the PPSc with the same desired range
56%–60% mesh has been increased from 56.9%
mesh with human supervision to 58.1% mesh with IOSC,
and the statistical average of the PPSh with the same desired
range 76%–80% mesh has been increased from 76.6%
mesh with human supervision to 77.9% mesh with
IOSC. Such results show that the proposed IOSC approach has
achieved the optimization of the PPS.
Fig. 11(A) and (B) show the comparisons of the qualified
ratio of concentrate grade and the metal recovery in terms of
human supervision scheme and IOSC scheme, respectively.
It can be seen that the qualified ratio of concentrate has been
improved greatly. The month average has been improved
by around 15.77%. Moreover, the metal recovery has been
increased slightly by around 1.51%. Although reasons for
improvement of these two indices cannot be attributable only to
the optimization of the PPS with the IOSC, it is well known that

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS 741

TABLE VIII
COMPARISON OF THE ESTIMATED WITH THE SAMPLED AT THE SAMPLING TIME POINTS IN FIG. 8

Fig. 9. Comparison of control effect of the PPSc between with human super- Fig. 11. Qualified ratio of concentrate grade and the metal recovery with IOSC
vision (A) and with IOSC (B). The zone between two dash-dotted lines is the or with human supervision. The data were taken from daily averages and then
desired range of the PPSc. averaged into monthly figures.

Fig. 12(A) and (B) shows the comparisons of the mill

throughput and the operative ratio of mill in terms of human
supervision scheme and IOSC scheme, respectively. Compared
with human supervision, the mill throughput per unit and the
operative ratio of the mill all have been improved greatly with
IOSC. According to statistical analysis, they increased by
around 2.78% and around 4.42%, respectively. Such results
indicate that the optimization of GPR also is achieved with the
proposed IOSC scheme.

C. Costs and Benefits

To construct the hierarchical automation system in this plant
is a long-term and complicated project because of following
aspects.
• The control system to be constructed is complicated. The
development of LLCS mainly include approximately 80
technologic equipments to be monitored, around 180 appa-
ratus to be installed and more than 60 basic control loops
to be configured and tuned. The development of the higher
level IOSC system mainly includes 48 intelligent mod-
Fig. 10. Comparison of control effect of the PPSh between with human super- ules to be designed. For each module, various groups of
vision (A) and with IOSC (B). The zone between two dash-dotted lines is the
desired range of the PPSh. process data and expert knowledge need to be collected and
preprocessed.
• The constructing condition is execrable. Because this plant
a good quality of the PPS can help to optimize the qualified rate is of a long age, most technical equipments are out of
of concentrate grade and the metal recovery of the subsequent date, the network of conveyor and pipeline is interlaced and
beneficiation process. complicated, and the work space is very narrow.

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 742 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2009
Fig. 12. Throughput per unit of mill and the operative ratio of mill with IOSC
or with human supervision. The data were taken from daily averages and then
averaged into monthly figures.
• During the construction of the control system, the daily
production of this plant cannot be affected, which brings
much inconvenience to the installation of this control
system.
As a result, it takes more than 20 months to complete the
installation of automation system. The total capital investment
is around 15 million RMB, which mainly includes equipment
costs, material cost, personnel subsidy, management fee, and
maintenances cost. The cost seems to be expensive. However,
after the control system has been operated in practical grinding
production, the noteworthy benefits have been achieved gradu-
ally which can be shown as follows.
• First, since good quality of the PPS and optimization of the
GPR are achieved with the IOSC approach, the final con-
centrate grade and concentrate capacity are all improved,
which directly provide an economic benefit of more than 6
million RMB per year to this plant.
• Since the mill can operate near the maximum operating
power after the installation of the proposed control system,
the grinding efficiency has been made either optimum or
sub-optimum. Underload and especially overload of mill
is occurred much less frequently than it was before, and
thus fewer mill stop/starts are required. For this reason, the
decrease of energy consumption and increase of equipment
operational rate are all noteworthy, which has saved the
cost of approximately 1.5 million RMB per year to this
plant.
• Finally, since many formal human operations are replaced
by this automatic control system, the number of onsite op-
erators has been reduced, leading to a saving cost of around
1.8 million RMB per year to this plant.
The above statistical data on cost and benefit shows the con-
structed IOSC-based automation system has a sound ability of
investment recovery and payoff.
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
VI. CONCLUSION
In response to the difficulties in the controlling setpoints man-
ually, an IOSC approach has been proposed for a LLCS con-
trolled grinding system. This approach has been successfully
applied to a typical two-stage GC of a hematite processing plant
in China. As a result, the PPS has been optimized, and the GPR
is increased. Moreover, the energy consumption is reduced and
the whole operational efficiency of the grinding production has
been improved. The presented approach can be extended to a
wide range of processes with the similar features, because it
shows the superiority in the following aspects.
• Because CBR, ANN, and fuzzy logic can model the
process directly using operational experience, expert
knowledge and historic process data, these intelligent
techniques can overcome the disadvantages of traditional
mathematical modeling. The disadvantages of traditional
mathematical modeling are that accurate process models
are difficult to establish and that the model parameters
need to be modified frequently.
• The LLCS is responsible for forcing some loop controlled
variables to track the given setpoints while assuring
closed-loop stability. The higher level IOSC system is
used to auto-adjust the setpoints of the LLCS so as to
optimize the production indices and maintain good overall
performance, which are usually beyond the capability of
the single LLCS.
• Via the innovative combination of the loop pre-setting con-
troller, the grinding particle size soft-sensor module, the
fuzzy adjustor and the LLCS, the closed-loop control struc-
ture for the PPS indices from the lower level to the higher
level is established.
• In contrast with the conventional fixed value control, the
range optimal control scheme is used to control the PPS
indices, which is much suited for the control of production
indices. The range optimal control can maintain the system
stabilization as it does not require frequent adjustment to
the controlled system. This means that it can reduce un-
necessary adjustments in response to allowable errors in
the measurement of production indices and other process
variables.
• The proposed methodology can be easily constructed for
industrial processes due to its hybrid strategy for different
parts of the control system. The case base of the loop
pre-setting controller and the fuzzy rule base of the fuzzy
adjustor can be obtained from experiential data and expert
knowledge. The index soft-sensor model can be developed
with the previous data or sampled data obtained by indus-
trial experiments.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers
for their constructive comments and the editors for their efforts
in editing and polishing the article. The authors would also like
thank Prof. S. Lu, Prof. H. Yue, Dr. Y. Fu, Dr. L. Zhai, and
Dr. D. Zhao for their several suggestions which improved this
paper.
 ZHOU et al.: INTELLIGENT OPTIMAL-SETTING CONTROL FOR GRINDING CIRCUITS OF MINERAL PROCESSING PROCESS
REFERENCES
[1] A. Pomerleau, D. Hodouin, A. Desbiens, and E. Gagnon, “A survey of
grinding circuit control methods: From decentralized PID controllers
to multivariable predictive controller,” Powder Technol., vol. 108, no.
2–3, pp. 103–115, 2000.
[2] T. Y. Chai, “Object-oriented integrated control technology of complex
industrial process (plenary paper),” in Proc. IFAC 5th Symp. Low Cost
Automation (PS3-1-PS3-11), China, 1998, pp. 243–247.
[3] H. X. Li and S. Guan, “Hybrid intelligent control strategy. Supervising
a DCS-controlled batch process,” IEEE Control Syst. Mag., vol. 21, no.
3, pp. 36–48, Jun. 2001.
[4] T. Y. Chai and J. L. Ding, “Integrated automation system for hematite
ores processing and its applications,” Meas. Control, vol. 29, no. 5, pp.
140–146, 2006.
[5] Z. J. Wang, Q. D. Wu, and T. Y. Chai, “Optimal-setting control for
complicated industrial processes and its application study,” Control
Eng. Practice, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 65–74, 2004.
[6] P. Zhou and T. Y. Chai, “Intelligent control setting with CBR for ore
grinding classification system,” J. Northeastern Univ. (Natural Sci-
ence), vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 613–616, 2007.
[7] T. Y. Chai, J. X. Liu, J. L. Ding, and C. Y. Su, “Hybrid intelligent
control for hematite high intensity magnetic separating process,” Meas.
Control, vol. 29, no. 40, pp. 171–175, 2007.
[8] V. R. Radharkrishnan, “Model based supervisory control of a ball mill
grinding circuit,” J. Process Control, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 195–211, 1999.
[9] M. Ramasamv, S. S. Narayanan, and C. D. P. Rao, “Control of ball
mill grinding circuit using model predictive control scheme,” J. Process
Control, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 273–283, 2005.
[10] K. Najim, R. Del vilar, and J. Valenzuela, “Self-optimization of an au-
togenous grinding circuit,” Mineral Eng., vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 1513–1522,
1995.
[11] C. Munoz and A. Cipriano, “An integrated system for supervision and
economic optimal control of mineral processing plants,” Mineral Eng.,
vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 627–643, 1999.
[12] R. Lestage, A. Pomerleau, and D. Hodouin, “Constrained real-time op-
timization of a grinding circuit using steady-state linear programming
supervisory control,” Powder Technol., vol. 124, no. 3, pp. 254–263,
2002.
[13] P. B. Kis, Cs. Mihyk, and B. G. Lakatos, “Optimising design of con-
tinuous grinding mill-classifier systems,” Chem. Eng. Process., vol. 44,
no. 2, pp. 273–277, 2005.
[14] J. B. Yianatosa, M. A. Lisboa, and D. R. Baeza, “Grinding capacity en-
hancement by solid concentration control of hydrocyclone underflow,”
Minerals Eng., vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 317–323, 2002.
[15] C. Bouche, C. Brandt, A. Broussaud, and V. W. Drunick, “Advanced
control of gold ore grinding plants in South Africa,” Mineral Eng., vol.
18, no. 8, pp. 866–876, 2005.
[16] X. S. Chen, Q. Li, and S. M. Fei, “Supervisory expert control for
ball mill grinding circuits,” Expert Syst. Applicat., vol. 34, no. 3, pp.
1877–1885, 2008.
[17] D. Soumitra, B. Wierenga, and A. Dalebout, “Case-based reasoning
systems: From automation to decision-aiding and stimulation,” IEEE
Ttrans. Knowledge Data Eng., vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 911–922, 1997.
[18] Z. M. Ye, “Artificial-intelligence approach for biomedical sample char-
acterization using Raman spectroscopy,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Sci. Eng.,
vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 67–73, Jan. 2005.
[19] Y. Du, R. del Villar, and J. Thibault, “Neural-net based softsensor
for dynamic particle size estimation in grinding circuits,” J. Mineral
Process., vol. 52, no. 2-3, pp. 121–135, 1997, International.
[20] A. Casali, G. Gonzalez, F. Torres, G. Vallebuona, L. Castelli, and P.
Gimenez, “Particle size distribution sort-sensor for a grinding circuit,”
Powder Technol., vol. 99, no. 1, pp. 15–21, 1998.
[21] D. Sbarbaro, P. Ascencio, P. Espinoza, F. Mujica, and G. Cortes,
“Adaptive soft-sensors for on-line particle size estimation in wet
grinding circuits,” Control Eng. Practice, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 171–178,
2007.
[22] R. G. Del Villar, J. Thibault, and R. Del Villar, “Development of a
soft-sensor for particle size monitoring,” Mineral Eng., vol. 9, no. 1,
pp. 55–72, 1996.
[23] K. J. Astrom and B. Wittenmark, Adaptive Control. New York: Ad-
dison Wesley, 1995.
[24] D. E. Seborg, T. F. Edgar, and D. A. Mellichamp, Process Dynamics
and Control, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 2004.
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS. Downloaded on June 28,2020 at 13:40:27 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
743
[25] S. Y. Zhou, B. C. Sun, and J. J. Shi, “An SPC monitoring system
for cycle-based waveform signals using haar transform,” IEEE Trans.
Autom. Sci. Eng., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 60–72, 2006.
Ping Zhou received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
control theory and engineering form Northeastern
University, Shenyang, China, in 2003 and 2006,
respectively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in the Key Laboratory of Integrated Automa-
tion of Process Industry, Ministry of Education,
Northeastern University.
His current research interests are the develop-
ment of control technologies for optimal process
operation, intelligent control, and the development
of soft-sensor technologies with application to
industrial process.
Mr. Zhou was the recipient of the Rockwell Automation Award for the Out-
standing Application Paper at the Sixth World Congress on Intelligent Control
and Automation.
Tianyou Chai (F’07) received the B.S. degree from
Northeastern Electric Power Institute, Changchun,
China, in 1980, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from
Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 1984
and 1987, respectively.
Currently, he is a Full Professor and Head of
the Research Center of Automation, Northeastern
University, Shenyang, China, and he is also Director
of the Key Laboratory of Integrated Automation
of Process Industry, Ministry of Education, North-
eastern University. His research interests include
adaptive control, intelligent decoupling control, integrated plant control and
systems, and the development of control technologies with applications to
various industrial processes.
Prof. Chai was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Engineering
in 2003 and elected as IEEE Fellow, IFAC Fellow, and academician of Inter-
national Eurasian Academy of Sciences in 2007. He was the recipient of the
National Awards of Science and Technology Progress of China in 1999, 2001,
and 2006 respectively, the 2002 HeLiang-HeLi Award for the Progress of Sci-
ence and Technology, the Science and Technology Honor Price of Liaoning
Province in 2003, and the Outstanding Industrial Achievement Award of Con-
trol Research at the IEEE Conference on System and Control in 2007. He was
the Member of IFAC’s Technical Committee and the Chairman of IFAC’s Coor-
dinating Committee on Manufacturing and Instrumentation from 1996 to 1999.
Hong Wang (M’97–SM’05) received the B.S.
degree from Huainan University of Mining Engi-
neering, Huainan, China, in 1982, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Huazhong, China, in 1984 and
1987, respectively.
From 1988 to September 1992, he was a Research
Fellow at Salford, Brunel, and Southampton Univer-
sities, U.K. He then joined the University of Man-
chester Institute of Science and Technology, Man-
chester, U.K., and has been a Professor of Process
Control and the Director of the Control Systems Center since 2002 at the Uni-
versity of Manchester. He also holds a research visiting position with the North-
eastern University of China, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
and Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research in-
terests are stochastic distribution control, fault detection and diagnosis, non-
linear control, and data-based modeling for complex systems. He has published
200 papers and three books in these area. He now serves as an editorial board
member for the Journal of Measurement and Control, Transactions of the In-
stitute of Measurement and Control, IMechE Journal of Systems and Control
Engineering, Automatica Sinica, and Journal of Control Theory and Applica-
tions.
Prof. Wang was an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
AUTOMATIC CONTROL.