ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929

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ISA Transactions
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/isatrans

Development and comparison of neural network based soft sensors

for online estimation of cement clinker quality
Ajaya Kumar Pani n, Vamsi Krishna Vadlamudi, Hare Krishna Mohanta 1
Department of Chemical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani 333031, India

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: The online estimation of process outputs mostly related to quality, as opposed to their belated
Received 5 March 2012 measurement by means of hardware measuring devices and laboratory analysis, represents the most
Received in revised form valuable feature of soft sensors. As of now there have been very few attempts for soft sensing of cement
8 June 2012
clinker quality which is mostly done by ofine laboratory analysis resulting at times in low quality
Accepted 11 July 2012
Available online 31 August 2012
clinker. In the present work three different neural network based soft sensors have been developed for
This paper was recommended online estimation of cement clinker properties. Different input and output data for a rotary cement
for publication by Ricky Dubay kiln were collected from a cement plant producing 10,000 tons of clinker per day. The raw data were
pre-processed to remove the outliers and the resulting missing data were imputed. The processed data
Keywords: were then used to develop a back propagation neural network model, a radial basis network model and
Cement kiln modeling
a regression network model to estimate the clinker quality online. A comparison of the estimation
Back propagation neural network
capabilities of the three models has been done by simulation of the developed models. It was observed
Radial basis function neural network
Regression neural network that radial basis network model produced better estimation capabilities than the back propagation and
Soft sensor regression network models.
& 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction thereby rendering data-driven modeling methods (black box or

A major problem in product quality control in process indus-
tries is the difculty faced in continuous online measurement of
certain output variables especially related to composition.
Although in some cases online analyzers are available, signicant
time delays associated with most of such instruments make
timely control difcult and sometimes impossible. Moreover
such instruments have low reliability. Soft sensing is a modeling
approach to estimate hard-to-measure process variables (primary
variables) from easy-to-measure, online process variables
(secondary variables). This plant model may be a rst principle
model, a black box model or a gray box model substituting some
physical sensors and using data acquired from some other
available ones. Though modeling of a process from rst principles
is often desirable, in most cases however a rst principle model is
not possible because of the enormous amount of complexity
involved and/or the intensive computation works involved. On
the other hand modern measurement techniques enable a large
amount of operating data to be collected, stored and analyzed,
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: 91 9929832108.
E-mail addresses: akpani@bits-pilani.ac.in (A.K. Pani),
vadlamudiy5ch845@gmail.com (V.K. Vadlamudi),
harekrishna.mohanta@gmail.com (H.K. Mohanta).
1
Tel.: 91 9829434948.
gray box) more preferable to rst principles models for complex
processes.
Articial neural network (ANN) has been a popular empirical
modeling technique over the years. The details of processes for
which neural network modeling has been done is given under the
category of each type of neural network development. Other than
pollutant emission studies, there have been very few attempts to
develop ANN based soft sensor for online estimation of product
quality in cement plant. The quality of clinker plays the most
important role in determining the quality of cement. Unfortu-
nately there is no hardware sensor available for online sensing of
clinker composition coming out of a rotary cement kiln. The
clinker quality is determined by measuring its contents of free
lime and other important components by ofine laboratory
analysis. Therefore any reduction in clinker quality, as determined
by ofine laboratory analysis hours after production, leads to
rejection or recycling of the clinker formed. Any method for
online estimation of clinker quality will largely help in reducing
the amount of rejection thereby resulting in lower revenue loss or
more prot. A few works on kiln modeling has been done based
on statistical approach [1,2]. However these works are aimed only
at estimating the free lime content of the clinker. While free lime
content is the most important clinker quality parameter, there are
also other important quality parameters (mentioned later in the
paper) which require online estimation for better product quality.

0019-0578/$ - see front matter & 2012 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2012.07.004
20 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929
Nomenclature
ci ith RBF center
D2i Euclidean distance between two input vectors
Ij Input to jth pattern neuron of GRNN
n Number of training samples
Q0.25, Q0.75 1st and 3rd quartile value of a dataset
var(y) Variance of a dataset y
wi Weight associated with ith RBF center
wij Weight associated with ith input neuron and jth
pattern neuron
xi ith observation value of an input variable
In the present work neural network based soft sensors have
been developed for estimation of eight clinker quality parameters.
Three types of network models, a back propagation network model,
a radial basis function network model and a regression network
model, have been developed and a comparison of their perfor-
mances has been done. The models receive four raw mix quality
parameters and ve physical variables pertaining to kiln operation
i.e. rpm, current, fuel ow rate, temperature and kiln feed rate as
inputs and produce values of eight clinker quality parameters.
The article describes the following topics in order: brief
description of the cement making process with focus on the
rotary cement kiln, data preprocessing, neural network develop-
ment, simulation results, discussion and conclusion.
2. Brief description of cement manufacturing process
The raw materials for cement are limestone as a source of lime,
clay as a source of silica, laterite as a source of iron and red ochre
as a source of aluminum. These raw materials are rst mixed in
the required proportion which is referred to as raw meal. This raw
meal is then ground to required size in a vertical roller mill. The
required size raw meal then enters a multistage cyclone preheater
where it is preheated by the hot ue gas coming from the cement
rotary kiln. Bulk of the calcination (CaCO3-CaO CO2) of the raw
meal is done in the multistage cyclone preheater. The preheated
raw meal then enters the cement kiln. The rotary kiln is the heart
of the cement plant where the different components present in
the raw meal, at high temperature, react with each other.
The lime (CaO) reacts with other components like silica, alumina
and iron oxide present in the raw meal to form complexes
of dicalcium silicate (C2S), tricalcium silicate (C3S), tricalcium
Table 1
All associated variables for cement kiln.
Raw meal quality Clinker quality
SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, CaO, MgO, K2O, Na2O, SO3, Cl, Lime SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, CaO, MgO, K2O, Na2O, SO3, Cl, Free Lime, lime
Saturation Factor, Silica Modulus, Alumina Modulus saturation Factor, Silica Modulus, Alumina Modulus, C3S, C2S, C3A, C4AF feed inlet temperature, coal feed
Table 2
Final selected variables for the cement kiln.
Raw meal quality Clinker quality
SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, CaO, Free Lime, Lime Saturation Factor, Silica Modulus,
Alumina Modulus, C3S, C2S, C3A, C4AF
x Mean value of a data set
x0.5 Median value of a data set
xmax Maximum value of a variable in a dataset
xmin Minimum value of a variable in a dataset
xnorm Normalized value
y Actual output value (normalized)
y Simulated output value of neural network model
s Standard deviation, scaling parameter of RBF net-
work, spread coefcient in GRNN
g Skewness of a data set
k Kurtosis of a data set
ji RBF model basis function
aluminate (C3A) and tetracalcium aluminoferrite (C4AF). All these
components must be maintained in a required proportion in the
clinker for maintaining the quality. The unreacted lime appears as
free lime in the clinker which should be limited to a minimum.
The clinker is then ground with a small amount of gypsum in the
cement mill producing the nal product i.e. cement.
In the cement plant the quality of the clinker to a large extent
affects the quality of the cement. However this clinker quality is
mostly determined by ofine laboratory analysis by taking clinker
samples at kiln outlet at regular intervals and then analyzing the
same for different components. Therefore failure to meet the
quality criteria leads to the rejection/recycling of the kiln product
resulting in signicant revenue loss. So a soft sensor which is
capable of continuous online estimation of clinker composition
can minimize the occurrence of such problems.
In order to develop the data driven soft sensor, data were
collected over a period of one month for various quality para-
meters of the raw meal as well as corresponding output clinker
and kiln operating variables from a cement plant having a kiln
capacity of 10,000 t clinker per day as shown in Table 1.
3. Data preprocessing
An industrial database provides data of all the variables that
are recorded. In the present work as shown in Table 1, there are
12 variables pertaining to raw meal quality (kiln inlet), 5 kiln
operating variables and 17 clinker quality variables. Out of all
quality parameters of clinker, eight important parameters were
chosen to be predicted by the model. For prediction of a few
chosen quality parameters, all the input information is not
required. Presence of irrelevant (or less relevant) variable data
Kiln operating variables
Kiln feed rate, current, kiln RPM,
rate
Kiln operating variables
Kiln feed rate, current, kiln RPM,
feed inlet temperature, coal feed rate
 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929 21

in the input data set leads to noise which may result in the detection techniques [6,7], the 3s method, Hampels method and
deterioration of the model. For neural network modeling, a reduc- the Box plot method were applied to each of the online operating
tion in the input data dimension leads to simplied neural archi- variable data set. The 3s method detects the data values as
tecture and reduced training time [3]. One approach to reducing the outliers satisfying the following inequality:
input variable dimension is by applying statistical methods such as
9xi x9
principal component analysis (PCA) or partial least squares (PLS) 43 1
s
which results in a low dimension input space. However the problem
associated with such methods are the new variables which are a The same for Hampels method is presented in Eq. (2).
combination of the original variables, are difcult to interpret in 9xi x0:5 9
terms of actual process variables [4]. Therefore based on prior 43 2
1:4826  median9xi x0:5 9
process knowledge and in consultation with plant operators the
variables shown in Table 2 were retained for subsequent model In the box plot method, the different regions in the plot are
development. The raw meal quality parameters along with the kiln dened as
operating variables are the inputs for the kiln model and the clinker 9
Lower inner fence : Q 0:25 1:5  Q 0:75 2Q 0:25 >>
quality parameters are the outputs of the model. >
>
Upper inner fence : Q 0:75 1:5  Q 0:75 2Q 0:25 =
The next task is handling of outliers and missing data. These 3
Lowerouterfence : Q 0:25 3  Q 0:75 2Q 0:25 >
>
problems are more likely to take place in case of online measure- >
>
Upperouterfence : Q 3  Q 2Q ;
ment than laboratory measurement. Outliers are sensor values 0:75 0:75 0:25

which deviate from the typical, or sometimes also meaningful,

ranges of the measured values. The raw data extracted from the
plant database are often contaminated with outliers which might
have resulted due to one or more reasons of hardware failure,
process disturbances or changes in operating conditions, instru-
ment degradation, transmission problems and/or human error [1].
Outliers may lead to model misspecication, biased parameter
estimation and incorrect analysis results [5].
In this work also, the collected industrial data suffers from
problem of outliers as shown in Fig. 1. Three popular outlier
Q0.25 and Q0.75 are 25% and 75% quantiles respectively
A mild outlier is a point beyond an inner fence on either side
while an extreme outlier is a point beyond an outlier fence.
The performance of the three techniques were evaluated by
determining the skewness and kurtosis values for the data
obtained after the removal of outliers by a particular technique.
The skewness value of a data set is dened as
P
g xi x3
4
ns3

Fig. 1. Actual online data of cement kiln operating parameters.

Table 3
Skewness and kurtosis values for raw and treated data.

Kiln operating Value for raw data Value for treated data
parameters
3 sigma Hampels method Box plot rule

g k g k g k g k

Kiln feed rate  3.842 18.442  3.79 19.119  1.181 4.12  1.669 5.658
Kiln current 32.946 1105.4  7.318 75.024  0.056 2.676 0.068 4.716
Kiln RPM  3.141 13.673  2.50 9.497  1.317 3.9231  1.892 6.2741
Kiln feed inlet temperature 9.954 110.73 14.341 227.488  0.624 3.51  1.038 4.70
Coal feed rate 34.577 1196.7  3.862 21.554  0.671 4.321  1.429 6.47
22 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929

Fig. 2. Comparison of the three outlier detection techniques.

The kurtosis is dened as
P was done in the range of 01 using the following formula:
k xi x3
5 xxmin
ns4
Skewness is a measure of symmetry of the dataset and for a
normally distributed data the skewness value is zero. Similarly
kurtosis represents the extent of peakedness or atness of the
data set and for a normally distributed data has a value of 3. The
skewness and kurtosis values for the raw and treated data are
shown in Table 3. As evident from Table 3 and Fig. 2, it was
observed that, the Hampel identier is able to detect most
efciently the outliers present in the data set.
The removal of the detected outliers resulted in missing values
in the data set. Missing data were imputed by the method of
linear interpolation [8] between the data preceding and following
it. While laboratory data for quality parameters were available at
an interval of every 23 h, online data is recorded in the database
history almost every 20 min. Therefore for the same time period
when there were only a few hundred laboratory quality data were
available, process variables were available in excess of thousand.
In order to make the entire neural network input variables of the
same dimension, linear interpolation was done to estimate the
online process variable at a time instant when the laboratory data
was available.
After performing the different data preprocessing operations
of variable selection, outlier detection and removal, missing value
imputation, nally data normalization was done so as to ensure
equal relevance for all variables. Sola and Sevilla [9] have shown
how the choice of normalization technique affects the predictive
capability of the network. In this case, since logistic sigmoidal
functions [1/(1e  x)], having a range from 0 to 1, are used for the
hidden layer neurons of the BP network, the data normalization
xnorm 6
xmax xmin
The nal normalized input data is shown in Fig. 3.
4. Neural network design
A neural network model requires a complete inputoutput
data set. In the present study raw meal quality parameters and
kiln operating variables are the inputs to the network and clinker
quality parameters are the outputs. A total of 223 inputoutput
data sets were prepared out of which 156 were used for training
the neural network model and 67 for model validation. The three
below mentioned neural networks were developed based on this
collected and processed data Fig. 3.
4.1. Back propagation neural network
The back propagation algorithm needs no explanation since till
date this has been the most popular neural network design algorithm.
Interested readers can refer to Samarasinghe [10] for calculation
details using back propagation algorithm. Neural network models
using back propagation algorithm have been developed for estimation
of PET viscosity in polymerization process [3], pollutant emission in
cement plant [11], process output variables of water desalination
plant [12], water content of natural gases [13], crude oil viscosity [14],
river ow [15], polymer property [16], enzyme activity and biomass
concentration [17], molten steel temperature [18]. The number of
 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929 23

neurons in the input layer and the hidden layer are the same as the
number of input variables and output variables of the process.
Choosing the number of hidden layers and number of neurons in
each hidden layer is the most critical decision to a successful design of
BPNN. Unfortunately there is no universal method to determine the
optimum network topology and these are mostly decided based on a
trial and error procedure so as to produce the least error [3,13,19].
Usually a single hidden layer is used to solve functional approxima-
tion problems and if the performance goal is not attained in a single
hidden layer gradually the number of hidden layers can be increased.
The more the number of hidden layers the more is the complexity
associated and large is the training time required. Few number of
neurons in the hidden layer leads to poor model accuracy whereas
many number of neurons result in model over tting and poor
generalization. In the present work however the use of two hidden
layers produced signicantly less error as compared to the use of only
one hidden layer. The number of neurons was determined by
conducting model training for different numbers of neurons ranging
from 3 to 20 and choosing the one producing the least error. The nal
optimum architecture based on large number of simulations is given
in Table 4 and the gure is produced in Fig. 4.
training time due to the use of non-linear optimization techniques,
and the possibility of getting trapped in local minima resulting in
sub-optimal solution. Although the use of genetic algorithm may
result in global minima, the procedure is computation intensive.
Radial basis function networks are a class of feed forward
supervised networks. It is a two layer network consisting of an input
layer, a hidden layer and an output layer with linear parameters.
Non-linear basis functions are used at the hidden layer neurons. A
center is associated with every hidden layer node. Hidden layer nodes
calculate the Euclidean distance between the center and the input
vector which is sent as an input to the basis function. The different
types of basis functions used are as follows [20]:
Thin plate spline function : jx x2 logx 7
 
x2
Gaussian function : jx exp  2 8
s
Table 4
BPNN details.

No of input nodes 9
4.2. RBF neural network
No of output nodes 8
No of hidden layers 2
Multilayer feed forward networks with sigmoidal activation No of neurons in 1st hidden layer 9
functions have been proven to be universal approximators No of neurons in 2nd hidden layer 12
which are mostly trained by the back propagation method using Activation function for the two hidden layers Sigmoidal
Activation function for output layer Linear
gradient descent algorithm. However, the disadvantages of BP neural Training algorithm used Scaled conjugate gradient
networks are the following [2022]: excessive computational or

Fig. 3. Final processed data to be used for model development.

24 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929

Fig. 4. Back propagation neural network architecture.

 
2 Moreover, though this method has faster training but results in
exp :xci : =s2i
Normalised Gaussian function ji x P   9 local optimum yielding suboptimal models [25,26].
n 2
j 1 exp :xc j : =sj
2
 1=2
Multiquadratic function : jx x2 s2 10
 1=2
Inverse multiquadratic function : jx x2 s2 11
s is the scaling parameter or the width which controls the spread of
the function around the center.
Out of the above functions, the Gaussian type is mostly used as
activation function for hidden layer nodes. So for an input vector
x, the network output is given as
X
n outputs. The following iteration is performed until the networks
y^ f x wi j:xci : 12
i1
wt is the weight associated with ith RBF center and :xci : is the
Euclidean distance between center ci and the input vector x.
The linear parameters used in RBF networks result in faster
training and less convergence problems in comparison to BP
neural networks. Also RBF networks have better approximation
ability with simpler network architecture as compared to MLPs
[23]. Selection of an appropriate radial basis network requires
careful selection of basis function and their associated parameters
(centers and widths). The performance of an RBF network largely
depends on the centers chosen. As a strict interpolator the
network must have as many RBF centers as the training data.
However this results in a large structure when the data are plenty
and results in over tting of the data and poor generalization
capability of the network. On the other hand the use of very less
number of centers results in under tting of the data [24].
The centers and widths are obtained using k-means clustering
algorithm or density estimation methods. This involves classify-
ing the input data into k number of clusters. The cluster centers
are determined by minimizing the total squared error incurred in
representing the data set by k cluster centers. However the
drawbacks of this standard algorithm are that for determining
the hidden nodes many passes of all training data are required
resulting in large computational time for large dataset [23].
The second category makes use of algorithms to determine the
network structure as well as the parameters. Some of the proposed
algorithms are orthogonal least squares algorithm [20,22], genetic
algorithm [27], individual training of each hidden unit based on
functional analysis, fuzzy partition of input space followed by linear
regression [23].
In the present work, a two layered feed forward neural
network was constructed. The rst layer has radial basis neurons
with Gaussian activation function as given in Eq. (8) to perform
the non-linear transformation of the input signal.
The second layer has linear neurons which produce linear
mean squared error falls below goal or the maximum number of
neurons are reached:
(1) The network is simulated with no neurons in the rst layer.
(2) The input vector with the greatest error is determined.
(3) A radial basis neuron is added with weights equal to that vector.
(4) The output layer weights are redesigned to minimize error.
In the present case the goal was set to zero and maximum
number of neurons to 70. A larger spread smoothens the function
approximation and a too small spread value leads to the use of
more number of neurons to t a smooth function. After adequate
trial and error an optimum spread value of 0.4 was used in the
present case.
4.3. Generalized regression neural network
Generalized regression neural network (GRNN) which was rst
proposed by Specht [28] is a powerful tool for non-linear function
approximation. In the general regression algorithm, the form of
inputoutput dependence is expressed as a probability density
function determined from the observed data. The algorithm has
 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929
the form [28]:
Pn  2
Di
i 1 y  exp 2s2
y^ Pn   13
D2i
i 1 exp 2s2
D2i , the Euclidean distance between two input vectors is given as:
 T   neural network training, it was ensured that the highest and the
D2i xi xj xi xj 14
The regression equations can be implemented in a neural
network like structure which is then known as GRNN. Fig. 5
shows the typical structure of a GRNN.
A typical GRNN has four layers: an input layer, a pattern layer,
a summation layer and the output layer. Input layer has the same
number of neurons as the number of input variables and pattern
layer has the same number of neurons as the number of training
cases. Pattern neurons compute a distance which is the square of
the differences across all weights as described in Eq. (14). For jth
pattern neuron, net input is
X
n 
2
Ij wij xj 15
i1
The activation function associated with the pattern neuron is
exponential and can be written as expI2j =2s2 . The choice of
smoothing function or spread parameter s is critical to the successful
design of a GRNN. A large value of s results in more generalization
and smoother tting whereas a low value results in more accurate
tting and poor generalization. The method suggested for optimum
selection of s is the hold out or leave one out method [28,29]. The
summation neurons calculate the sum of weighted inputs from
pattern layer. There have been some applications of GRNN modeling
for estimation of crude oil viscosity [14], river ow [15], polymer
property [16], soil quality [29], river sediments [30], coal grindability
[31], plasma process parameters [32], water quality [33], compressive
strength and elasticity modulus [34], NOx emission [35].
5. Results
Hampels identier, which uses outlier resistant median and
median absolute deviation (MAD) values instead of the outlier
sensitive mean and standard deviation, is more effective. There-
fore it can be concluded that if outlier numbers are less in a very
large data set which will affect the values of mean and standard
deviation insignicantly one can use the three sigma method.
Otherwise it is better to use the Hampels identier.
Fig. 5. Generalized regression neural network structure.
25
The total collected data (online process variable data from
database history and quality data from the laboratory), after outlier
removal, missing value imputation and data normalization, were split
into two parts. Two thirds of the data (156 data values) were used for
model development (training data) and one third (67 data values)
were used for model validation purpose. While selecting the data for
lowest values from each variable set were retained in the training set
so that the developed model can be used over a wider operating
range. Because empirical models do not extrapolate well and one
should be careful while using the model, the input data actually falls
within the range which was used for model development.
Figs. 6 and 7 make a comparison of the estimation capability of
the three neural network models with respect to the trained and
untrained data respectively. The performance of the models is
determined by evaluating the mean of squared error (MSE) values
produced by each model to the trained and untrained data.
Pn  
^ 2
i 1 yy
The MSE value is given as 16
n
Table 5 shows the minimum mean squared error achieved for
the three models. Actual variable values are used for the graphs
whereas the mean squared error values are based on the normal-
ized values. Further analysis of the estimation capabilities of the
developed models was done by computing the variance account for
(VAF) values of the models for the unknown data. The VAF values
for different estimated parameters are presented in Table 6.
6. Discussion
As stated earlier, the skewness and kurtosis values for a
normally distributed data should be 0 and 3 respectively. Therefore
it can be concluded that the outlier detection technique producing
skewness and kurtosis result close to these values is the most
effective. From Table 3 the superiority of Hampels method over the
other two methods is veried.
Training of the neural network can be viewed as a parameter
estimation technique to get the best model. But before choosing
the model the following must be determined:
Does the model perform well with the untrained data?
Is the best developed model suitable enough for a given
process application?
The answer to the rst question is the model validation
process which was carried out by simulating the model with
26 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929

Fig. 6. Actual and estimated values of clinker quality parameters for training data.

unknown data and determining the error or residual value
between actual and model estimated values. The mean squared
error values produced by different models to validate the data is
produced in Table 5.
One interesting observation is, as far as simulation of the
networks for the training data is concerned, all three models
produce almost comparable results (Fig. 6 and 2nd column
Table 5). But the important aspect where the BP network model
lags behind the radial basis network and the regression network
model is the generalization capability of the models (Fig. 7 and
3rd column Table 5) i.e. how well the models perform when they
are supplied with data not used for the training. As stated earlier
the optimum selection of the spread coefcient is crucial to the
success of the GRNN model. Theoretically, a decrease in the value
of sigma s will increase error value for untrained data (poor
generalization) and decrease error value for trained data (over
tting). In this case, a decrease in s below the optimum value of
4.9 resulted in decrease in MSE for trained data but increase in
MSE for unknown data. However a value beyond the optimum did
not result in better generalization but only resulted in signicant
increase in MSE for trained data.
It is quite obvious from Table 5 that RBFN and GRNN clearly
outperform the network model trained by the back propagation
method. The performance of a model is assessed by its ability for
 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929 27

Fig. 7. Actual and estimated values of clinker quality parameters for validation data.

Table 5 [36] of the different models in predicting the clinker quality

Mean squared error comparison of neural network soft sensors. parameters. The VAF is dened as
  
Types of Mean squared error Mean squared error var yy^
Neural Network value for training data value for untrained data VAF 1  100 17
var y
Back propagation 0.0068 0.0693 The closer is the value of VAF to 100, the better is the model.
Radial basis 0.0086 0.03 Detailed analysis of the results of Table 6 reveals that the BPNN
Generalized regression 0.0038 0.039
model has very low generalization capability. The high negative
VAF values for the BPNN model is due to the fact that the model
exhibits highly erratic behavior in estimating outputs from
unknown inputs, resulting in much higher variance for the resi-
generalization. However there is only marginal error difference in duals (yy^ ) than for the actual output. Except free lime content, all
the validation process between RBFN and GRNN models. To have other clinker quality parameters are better predicted by RBFN than
a clear answer to whether the best designed model is good GRNN as evident by the higher VAF values for the RBFN model.
enough for the purpose, further analysis of the model perfor- The nal issue regarding online implementation of soft sensors
mances were done by computing the variance account for (VAF) in the process has been discussed by several researchers [3,37].
28 A.K. Pani et al. / ISA Transactions 52 (2013) 1929

Table 6 References
VAF values for model simulated output for unknown input data.

Quality Parameters VAF values for different neural network models [1] Lin B, Recke B, Knudsen J, Jorgensen SB. A systematic approach for soft sensor
development. Computers and Chemical Engineering 2007;31:41925.
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