Prediction of the Time-Varying Ledge Profile inside a High-Temperature Metallurgical Reactor with an Unscented Kalman Filter-Based Virtual Sensor

Abstract

A non-intrusive inverse heat transfer procedure for predicting the two-dimensional time-varying profile of the protective phase-change ledge on the inside surface of the walls of a high-temperature metallurgical reactor is presented. The inverse method, used here as a virtual sensor, enables the on-line estimation of the position of the solid-liquid phase front using thermal sensors embedded in the reactor wall. The virtual sensor comprises a state observer coupled to a reduced model of the reactor. Results show that the virtual sensor that yields the best prediction comprises an unscented Kalman filter, a nonlinear state-space model of thereactor, and two heat flux sensors located at the wall/ledge interface.

Acknowledgments

The authors are very grateful to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) and to Rio Tinto Alcan for their financial support. M. LeBreux would also like to thank Dr. Marc-André Marois and Professor Philippe Micheau for many insightful discussions regarding inverse methods and Kalman filters.