Closing the Loop: Enhancing Industrial Productivity Through Soft Sensor

The role of sensing is pivotal in the context of Industry 4.0. The measurements provided by sensing digital technologies can support automatic control systems in achieving enhanced industrial productivity and ensuring process safety. This work discusses the complete cycle of innovation by presenting the development of a mass flow rate soft sensor and the outcomes of its integration into a mass flow rate control system of an industrial mineral process circuit. Several machine learning techniques were tested to build the soft sensor, utilizing information on the current of a conveyor belt as input. Comparative results indicated the effectiveness of a linear regression model, that shows both satisfactory measurement accuracy and a simpler formulation. Moreover, integrating the soft sensor into the control system enhanced 6.17 % the process productivity and increased safety by reducing the mass flow rate variability by 75.16%.