Fault Detection and Diagnosis In Hall–Héroult Cells Based on Individual Anode Current Measurements Using Dynamic Kernel PCA

Individual anode current signals in aluminum reduction cells provide localized cell conditions in the vicinity of each anode, which contain more information than the conventionally measured cell voltage and line current. One common use of this measurement is to identify process faults that can cause significant changes in the anode current signals. While this method is simple and direct, it ignores the interactions between anode currents and other important process variables. This paper presents an approach that applies multivariate statistical analysis techniques to individual anode currents and other process operating data, for the detection and diagnosis of local process abnormalities in aluminum reduction cells. Specifically, since the Hall–Héroult process is time-varying with its process variables dynamically and nonlinearly correlated, dynamic kernel principal component analysis with moving windows is used. The cell is discretized into a number of subsystems, with each subsystem representing one anode and cell conditions in its vicinity. The fault associated with each subsystem is identified based on multivariate statistical control charts. The results show that the proposed approach is able to not only effectively pinpoint the problematic areas in the cell, but also assess the effect of the fault on different parts of the cell.