Expert system based adaptive dynamic matrix control for ball mill grinding circuit

Ball mill grinding circuit is a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system characterized with couplings and nonlinearities. Stable control of grinding circuit is usually interrupted by great disturbances, such as ore hardness and feed particle size, etc. Conventional model predictive control usually cannot capture the nonlinearities caused by the disturbances in real practice. Multiple models based adaptive dynamic matrix control (ADMC) is proposed for the control of ball mill grinding circuit. The novelty of the strategy lies in that intelligent expert system is developed to identify the current ore hardness and then select a proper model for ADMC. Compared with the various nonlinear DMC strategies, the approach can synthesize and analyze as many variables and status as possible to adequately and reliably identify the process conditions, and it does not introduce additional computational complexity, which makes it readily available to the industrial practitioner. Simulation results and industrial applications demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of this control strategy.