Modeling of lime production process using artificial neural network

Abstract Lime is a significant material in many industrial processes, including steelmaking by blast furnace. Lime production through rotary kilns is a standard method in industries, yet it has depreciation, high energy consumption, and environmental pollution. A model of the lime production process can help to not only increase our knowledge and awareness but also can help reduce its disadvantages. This paper presents a black-box model by Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for the lime production process considering pre-heater, rotary kiln, and cooler parameters. To this end, actual data are collected from Zobahan Isfahan Steel Company, Iran, which consists of 746 data obtained in a duration of one year. The proposed model considers 23 input variables, predicting the amount of produced lime as an output variable. The ANN parameters such as number of hidden layers, number of neurons in each layer, activation functions, and training algorithm are optimized. Then, the sensitivity of the optimum model to the input variables is investigated. Top-three input variables are selected on the basis of one-group sensitivity analysis and their interactions are studied. Finally, an ANN model is developed considering the top-three most effective input variables. The mean square error of the proposed models with 23 and 3 inputs are equal to 0.000693 and 0.004061, respectively, which shows a high prediction capability of the two proposed models.