SAMI 2016 IEEE 14th International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 21-23, 2016 Herlany,

ny, Slovakia

Using Computational Intelligence in Biomass

Combustion Control in Medium-Scale Boilers
M. Tthov*, J. Dubjk*
*

Technical University of Koice, Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Cybernetics,

Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, Preov, Slovakia
maria.tothova@tuke.sk, jan.dubjak@tuke.sk
The fuel supply control loop adjusts the amount of
supplied fuel according to actually desired power
of the boiler.

AbstractFrom a control point of view, the biomass

combustion is extremely complex process with significant
dynamic couplings among variables and a number of
measurable and non-measurable disturbances. The
relationships among these variables are usually highly nonlinear with long time-delays. Therefore, it is often necessary
to use computational intelligence methods in modeling and
control of biomass combustion process. In the paper there
are described some approaches to combustion process
control in medium-scale biomass-fired boilers. The
computational intelligence methods were used for boiler
output water temperature control and correction of fuel
supply and amounts of primary and secondary air supplied
into the boiler combustion chamber according to trends of
carbon monoxide emissions.

The primary air control loop adjusts the amount of

supplied primary air according to the amount
of supplied fuel and the actual output boiler
temperature.
The secondary air control loop adjusts the amount
of supplied secondary air according to the amount
of supplied fuel and the oxygen concentration in
flue gas.

Keywordsbiomass combustion; computational intelligence;

artificial neural networks; Varela immune controller

I.
INTRODUCTION
There is need in biomass combustion to achieve
simultaneously controlled values of the required boiler
heat output and optimal conditions for the combustion
process from both the combustion efficiency and low
emissions point of view [1], [2]. But there are lots of
difficulties to increase combustion efficiency only by
classic approaches to the biomass combustion process
control because especially woodchips are characterized in
that they have big inhomogeneity. Level of the
inhomogeneity of the woodchips depends on the moisture
content in wood, the type of wood, and it has effect on the
control parameters of combustion process and thus of
course on the combustion quality [3], [4], [5], [6].
As it was presented in [7] and [8], considering
inconstant characteristics of the fuel it is necessary to
control the amount of combustion air during woodchips
supply into furnace and during the combustion too. If the
amount of air is less than optimum one, incomplete
combustion occurs and flue gas contains a part of
combustible components. On the other hand in case
of supplying the large amount of the combustion air, an
energy loss (called also flue loss) occurs. There is also
necessity to divide the supplied air into primary and
secondary air. Nowadays high quality medium-scale
boilers for woodchips combustion are already equipped by
a sensor of oxygen (O2) concentration in the flue gas for
control of the supplied air amount. Then the basic control
scheme (Fig. 1) contains these main control loops [9],
[10], [11]:

978-1-4673-8740-8/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE

Figure 1. Control scheme of medium-scale biomass-fired boiler

The most common way of O2 concentration

measurement in medium-scale biomass-fired boilers is
using a low cost lambda probe, which is generally an
oxygen analyzer working on the principle of
electrochemical cell. From the measured O2 concentration
in the flue gas it is possible to calculate the excess air ratio
as follows [12]:

81

M. Tthov and J. Dubjk Using Computational Intelligence in Biomass Combustion Control in Medium-Scale Boilers

21
.
21 O 2 %

Output water temperature

(1)

CO emissions
O2 concentration

Then the amount of supplied combustion air is usually

adjusted by fan speed control of the secondary air based
on information about the actual excess air calculated by
(1). In this way it is possible to reduce the energy loss
caused by unnecessarily high excess air in the combustion
process. Control algorithms mainly use classical PID
controllers. The working range of the excess air ratio is
usually in interval <1,4; 2> for biomass combustion and
its optimal value depends on the combustion chamber
construction, the moisture content in wood, the type of
wood and so on.
II. COMBUSTION OPTIMIZATION
A problem in biomass combustion control according to
control scheme in Fig. 1 is determination of the desired
value of oxygen concentration because it strongly depends
on the quality of woodchips [13]. One of the possibilities
(and frequently used by manufacturers of the mediumscale biomass-fired boilers) is the manual input of fuel
properties locally via the display unit of the control system
or remotely via monitoring system. But it brings to the
boiler control a subjective factor that can decrease
efficiency of the combustion process. Therefore, an
optimization block was added into control scheme in
Fig. 1, which task is to adjust control parameters not only
on the oxygen concentration in the flue gas, but also on
the basis of produced emissions of carbon monoxide (CO)
and possibly also according to furnace temperature. For
CO emission measurement it is possible to use a flue gas
analyser (which can measure also O2 concentration), but it
is not very suitable for continuous measurement in
medium-scale biomass-fired boilers due to its relative high
price in comparison to the price of the whole boiler.
Therefore, the low cost CO sensor was designed on the
basis of a tin dioxide (SnO ) semiconductor with low
conductivity in clean air, which is more described in [12].
The most optimal operating conditions of biomass
combustion are when the compromise between maximal
combustion efficiency and minimal CO emissions is
achieved [14]. One of the control algorithms tasks of
optimization block in control scheme in Fig. 2 is to find
such value of excess air ratio so that CO emissions
would be minimal although the fuel parameters have been
changed [15]. For fulfillment of this task it is necessary to
continuously monitor a trend between CO emissions and
excess air ratio and consequently to change the set point of
oxygen concentration in the flue gas according to
approximated dependence CO = f(). Considering a large
scatter of the measured data the computational intelligence
techniques were used for approximation of the measured
CO/ dependence because for many different problems
with difficult or impossible finding of formal algorithms
to solve them, artificial neural networks can be applied
[16], [17], [18]. Two approximation tools using neural
networks have been tested for approximation of CO/
biomass combustion dependence: Neural Network Fitting
Tool of Matlab and AForge.Neuro library. The
comparable results of approximation have been obtained
and one of them is in Fig. 3 [19], [20]. AForge.Neuro
library approximation algorithm was implemented into
process control system supporting C# [21].

Boiler
output
water

Boiler heat
exchanger

Combustion
optimization

Furnace
temperature

Flue gas

Combustion
process

Secondary
air control

Primary air
control

Desired
output
water
temperature

Boiler
power
control

Fuel supply
control

Flue gas temperature

Figure 2. Control scheme of medium-scale biomass-fired boiler with

combustion optimization block

Figure 3. Approximation of CO/ dependence by AForge.Neuro

III. OUTPUT WATER TEMPERATURE CONTROL

Using standard PID controller for output water
temperature control of small-scale biomass-fired boilers
complicates the stabilization of the controlled process
especially due to excessive time-delay of the plant.
Therefore, it can be difficult to achieve the desired quality
control of water temperature at the boiler output. One of
the solutions used for control of systems with a significant
time delay is the Smith predictor, which uses a model of
the plant for predicting the value of the controlled variable
without time-delay. The downside is that this algorithm
requires a relatively accurate model of the plant. Another

82

SAMI 2016 IEEE 14th International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 21-23, 2016 Herlany, Slovakia

solution is to use MPC (Model Predictive Control), but it

also requires a model of the controlled system. An
interesting solution is to use the principle of human
immune system to control of the water temperature at the
boiler output. The human immune system is a system with
extremely complex interactions between the various
organs and the different types of cells. From the
engineering point of view the interesting features are
learning ability, adaptability, robustness and decentralized
nature.
A. Varela immune controller
Artificial immune system (AIS) is a new paradigm in
computational intelligence field, which draws inspiration
from immune system of humans for solving different
problems in engineering (e.g. fault detection, optimization,
supervised or unsupervised machine learning, clustering,
controller tuning etc.). Since immune system of humans is
extremely complex, AIS makes use of only quite
superficial analogies with natural immune system and
relies on concepts/mechanisms like T- and B-cells,
antibodies, antigenese, pathogens, clonal expansion,
affinity maturation, where each of these has an equivalent
in machine learning. As natural immune system AIS uses
a wide spectrum of various mechanisms to defend body
from harmful external agents, AIS is also quite universal
in its capabilities within machine learning area.
For output water temperature control of medium-scale
biomass-fired boilers it is proposed to use Varela immune
controller, which was shown in [22], [23] to have very
good anti-delay capabilities. Varela immune controller
belongs to the group of non-linear controllers, which make
use of some of natural immune system paradigms. An
improved Varela immune controller based on the second
generation immune network theory was proposed in [24]
and derived in [25]. The controller is based on the
continuous model of immune network theory, where the
dynamics of B-cells and antibodies concentration is given
in the form of differential equations. This is detailed
described in [26], [27], analogies between variables in
biological model and controller are in Fig. 4 and then final
model of Varela immune controller used for simulation is
in a form:

df
= k f f (t ) + k3 M (u )u (t ) ,
dt
d 2u
dt 2

= u (t )k 4 P(u (t )) k5u (t ) + k I f (t )e(t ) ,

cell proliferation rate due to antigen presence, ,

negative constants ( < ) and k , k positive constants.
1

Figure 4. Analogies between variables in biological model of Varela

immune network and variables in Varela immune controller

B. Testing of improved Varela immune controller

In order to analyze the performance of improved Varela
immune controller for output water temperature control of
biomass-fired boiler the block diagram in Fig. 5 was used
with linear transfer function with time-delay derived in
[28] for medium-scale boiler. Under some simplification
such system can be considered as single-input singleoutput (SISO) type, where the input variable is fuel feed
[kgh-1] and the output variable is water temperature [C].
It was found out that the system responses for fuel supply
increasing and decreasing were qualitatively different and
therefore two distinct linear transfer functions were
identified one for the case when the fuel feed rate was
positive (G+) and other one for the case when it was
negative (G):
G+ (s) =

du
0,0615 480s
e
, if
4
dt
(200s + 1)

0,

(6)

G (s) =

du
0,0615 150s
e
, if
2
dt
(165s + 1)

0.

(7)

(2)

(3)

where
M (u ) = k M (e
P(u ) = k P (e

1 u

1 u

e
e

2 u

2 u

)sign (u ) ,

(4)

)sign (u )

(5)

and kf combined parameter of antibody death rate (due

to natural death of antibodies as well as due to their
interaction), k3 antibody production rate by mature Bcells, k4 B-cell proliferation rate, k5 B-cell death rate, kI
combined parameter of antigen elimination rate and B-

Figure 5. Block diagram of water temperature control using Varela

immune controller with simulated annealing optimization

The following nomenclature is used in Fig. 5: w

desired water temperature, e water temperature control
error, u fuel feed (control action), y actual water
temperature. The control action u was upper limited with
the value of 350 kgh-1 (represented as saturation block at
the controller output). To achieve good Varela immune
controller settings, simulated annealing algorithm

83

M. Tthov and J. Dubjk Using Computational Intelligence in Biomass Combustion Control in Medium-Scale Boilers

OPTIMIZED VALUES OF VARELA IMMUNE CONTROLLER

COEFFICIENTS

Coefficient

kf

k3

k4

k5

kI

Value

2.4410-6

0.023

0.265

4.86210-4

In addition to parameters in Table 1, another three

parameters could also be taken into account: initial value
of antibody concentration (represented as initial setting of
antibody integrator) and scaling coefficients for
proliferation and maturation function. These three
parameters were not incorporated into optimization and
were set in advance based on the trial-and-error results.
Based on the block diagram of water temperature
control in Fig. 5 using equations (2), (3), (4), (5) for
Varela immune controller, plant transfer function (6) for
boiler power increase and function (7) for power decrease
the simulation model was designed (Fig. 7). The model
was created and simulated in Matlab/Simulink
environment. The parameters of Varela controller were set
up according to Table 1.
The performance of optimized Varela immune
controller for boiler output water temperature control is
shown in Fig. 6 for different changes in desired boiler
power. As it can be seen from the figure, Varela controller
offers stable performance with acceptable overshooting
for power increase. It is notable that the settling times for
all steps are relatively long which can be attributed to
modest responses of Varela immune controller to changes
in control error caused by its specific interactions between
antigen, B-cells and antibodies. This might be one of the
strongest reasons for its good anti-delay capabilities.

reference
simulated output

output water temperature change [C]

TABLE I.

10

8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0

10
x 10

reference
simulated output

0
0

time [s]

10
x 10

Figure 6. Control tests for different changes in desired output water

Figure 7. Simulation model of output water temperature control system with improved Varela immune controller

84

time [s]

output water temperature change [C]

described in [27] was used with result of optimization in

Table 1. During optimization it was found out that the best
results were obtained when k4 parameter was set to zero.

SAMI 2016 IEEE 14th International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics January 21-23, 2016 Herlany, Slovakia

IV. CONCLUSION
By using advanced control algorithms based on
computational intelligence it is possible to optimize the
combustion process in medium-scale biomass-fired boilers
so that also during transition states of boiler power and
also under fuel quality change a near optimum biomass
combustion would be provided, i.e. the complete
combustion with minimum excess of combustion air.
These control algorithms can use artificial neural
networks to find an optimal value of the excess air ratio
from measured CO/ dependence. According to so far
obtained research results that only information about
tendency of nascent carbon monoxide is important for
biomass combustion control algorithm, the fuzzy rules
will be also tested in further research to find an optimal
value of the excess air ratio on the left side of the course
in Fig. 3.
Varela controller based on artificial immune system is
able to stabilize the non-linear process with time-delay of
boiler output water temperature control. Its drawback is
that the effect of particular parameters on controllers
performance is not as clear as for example in PID
controller. Therefore some optimization (metaheuristic)
methods are needed to achieve at least near-optimal
solution. Despite the fact that the controller was tested
only in limited range of desired output water temperature
changes, it could be seen from results of testing that the
optimized parameter values provided stable performance
of controller, i.e. the simulated annealing algorithm was
capable to find solution of reasonable quality.

[9]

[10]
[11]

[12]
[13]
[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]
[18]

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The research work is supported by grant VEGA
1/0881/13 Research of Algorithms and Methods for
Predictive Control of Biomass Combustion Processes.

[19]

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