Temperature profile estimation for a thermal regenerator

The thermal regenerator system studied is the blast furnace stoves for the No. 7 blast furnace at the Ispat Inland facility in East Chicago, Indiana. The paper outlines the process model and model-based state estimation techniques implemented on these stoves. The process model is a detailed heat transfer model of the stoves used as part of a predictive control scheme to determine the minimum amount of fuel necessary to heat the blast air. Batch nonlinear least squares estimation is used to update the predicted temperature profile at the end of each cooling cycle. This estimated profile is then used by the model-based controller to determine the minimum fuel requirement for the subsequent heating cycle.