Agrupamento de fornos de redução de alumínio utilizando os algoritmos Affinity Propagation, Mapa auto–organizável de Kohonen (som), Fuzzy C–Means e K–Means

Abstract

The continuous development of technology accounts for measures that provide industries benefits to grant them profitability and competitive advantage. In the mineralogy field, aluminum smelting usually requires substantial number of cells, also known as reduction pots, to produce aluminum in a continuous and complex process. Analytical monitoring is essential for those industries’ competitive advantage, given that during operation some cells show behavior similar to others, thereby forming clusters of cells. These clusters depend on data patterns usually implicit or invisible for the operation, but can be found by data analysis techniques. In this work four clustering techniques are presented to that end: the Affinity Propagation; the Kohonen Self Organizing Map; the Fuzzy C–Means; and the K–Means Algorithm. These techniques are used to find and group cells that share similar behavior, by analysing seven variables which are closely related to the aluminum reduction process. This work aims at addressing the benefits of clustering, especially by simplifying the aluminum potline analysis, once a large group of cells might be summarized in one sole group, what can provide more compact yet rich information for data driven modeling and control. Moreover, the identification of similar data patterns in clusters makes the task of those who is going to be in charge of analyzing these dats. This work also identifies the ideal cluster size for each technique applied.