An Intelligent Mill Load Switching Control of the Pulverizing System for an Alumina Sintering Process

This paper proposes an intelligent switching control strategy for the pulverizing system for an alumina sintering process. The control strategy consists of a coordinating controller, a proportional-integral (PI) controller, a rule-based reasoning controller and a switching mechanism. The practical application to a pulverizing system in an alumina sintering process has shown that when the hot air temperature is low and varies frequently, this control strategy ensures that the mill load and the temperature of the mill outlet are both within their required ranges, and also controls the mill load at the level corresponding to the maximum mill output. Moreover, it has been observed that the proposed control strategy can avoid the fault operating condition and effectively reduce the unit energy consumption.