Photo courtesy of the gas research institute. The software is designed to work with the Gas Research Institute's Fuel Lean Gas Reburn technology, a process that injects controlled amounts of natural gas into the upper furnaces of coal-fueled boilers. The natural gas reburns the NOx gases, converting them to elemental nitrogen, which makes up about 80 percent of the earth's natural atmosphere. The intelligent controller learns the power plant behavior using artificial intelligence methods, such as neural networks and fuzzy logic.
Neural networks learn like a human does, by trial and error.
The controller learned to mimic the complex plant processes in the boiler by analyzing performance data collected from a ComEd power plant. When installed in a coal-fired power plant, the NOx controller is projected by Reifman to pay for itself within one year.