Data-Driven Flotation Industrial Process Operational Optimal Control Based on Reinforcement Learning

This paper studies the operational optimal control problem for the industrial flotation process, a key component in the mineral processing concentrator line. A new model-free data-driven method is developed here for real-time solution of this problem. A novel formulation is given for the optimal selection of the process control inputs that guarantees optimal tracking of the operational indices while maintaining the inputs within specified bounds. Proper tracking of prescribed operational indices, namely concentrate grade and tail grade, is essential in the proper economic operation of the flotation process. The difficulty in establishing an accurate mathematic model is overcome, and optimal controls are learned online in real time, using a novel form of reinforcement learning we call interleaved learning for online computation of the operational optimal control solution. Simulation experiments are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed interleaved learning method and to show that it performs significantly better than standard policy iteration and value iteration.