A Real-World Industrial Application of Particle Swarm Optimization: Baghouse Designing

Abstract

Due to the high ability and flexibility of meta-heuristic algorithms (MAs), they can widely be used in many applications to solve different problems. Recently, real-world engineering applications of these optimization algorithms have attracted researchers’ attention. This paper applies particle swarm optimization (PSO) as an effective population-based MAs to design the baghouse (BH). BH filters are among the most commonly used devices in air pollution control systems in mining and food manufacturers and power plants. Designing the BH depends on several parameters such as its capacity or airflow (Nm3/h), air-to-cloth ratio ([Formula: see text]), cam velocity, and installation limitations. Generally, industrial designers select the number and length of bags and their arrangement based on the experimental observations to meet the parameters mentioned above. The minimum cost or total weight of equipment is utilized for proposing a competitive price for suppliers. In this paper, a PSO algorithm is used to minimize the total cost by finding the best possible design (the number, length, and arrangement of bags). In addition, a real example of installed BH in a pelletizing plant is given and compared with PSO results to investigate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The results suggest that PSO can find a better design with minimum total cost than an installed BH filter, and therefore, PSO is applicable to industrial designers.