Patent ID: 6859766

Claim:
A method for indirect gas species monitoring for monitoring a gas sample of a combustion process for burning a combustible comprising, in combination: using an on-line, analytical technique to measure gas species in the sample of a combustion process, the gas species being selected from species that are detectable by the on-line, analytical technique and that correlate to at least one process parameter to be predicted; developing the software sensor by analyzing process data using manipulated inputs to obtain desired outputs to generate data for software sensor development; verifying the compatibility of the initial correlation; applying off-line filters and statistical analyses as necessary to reduce measurement noise, outliers and offsets from the data; determining a neural-network based software sensor; determining the network structure; training the neural network by determining the values of the weights and biases of the network; and coupling the gas species measurement with the software sensor to predict the process parameter to be predicted.