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Research article

Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD

with parameter optimization
Shirong Zhang a, Qian Tang a, Yu Lin a, Yuling Tang b,n
a
Department of Automation, College of Power and Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
b
College of Computer Science, South-Central University for Nationalities, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Feed water treatment process (FWTP) is an essential part of utility boilers; and fault detection is expected
Received 10 December 2015 for its reliability improvement. Classical principal component analysis (PCA) has been applied to FWTPs
Received in revised form in our previous work; however, the noises of T2 and SPE statistics result in false detections and missed
15 January 2017
detections. In this paper, Wavelet denoise (WD) is combined with PCA to form a new algorithm, (PCA-
Accepted 22 March 2017
WD), where WD is intentionally employed to deal with the noises. The parameter selection of PCA-WD is
further formulated as an optimization problem; and PSO is employed for optimization solution. A FWTP,
Keywords: sustaining two 1000 MW generation units in a coal-red power plant, is taken as a study case. Its op-
Feed water treatment process eration data is collected for following verication study. The results show that the optimized WD is
Fault detection
effective to restrain the noises of T2 and SPE statistics, so as to improve the performance of PCA-WD
PCA
algorithm. And, the parameter optimization enables PCA-WD to get its optimal parameters in an auto-
Wavelet denoise
Parameter optimization matic way rather than on individual experience. The optimized PCA-WD is further compared with
classical PCA and sliding window PCA (SWPCA), in terms of four cases as bias fault, drift fault, broken line
fault and normal condition, respectively. The advantages of the optimized PCA-WD, against classical PCA
and SWPCA, is nally convinced with the results.
& 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Presently, supercritical units and ultra-supercritical units are
widely employed in China; and have gradually become the main
parts of Chinese electricity supply. A power generation unit is a
typical continuous production process and consists of hundreds of
sub-processes and devices. Faults from all the components tend to
affect the operation safety of the whole units, even, result in ac-
cidents or unit shutdowns, which inevitably leads to large -
nancial loss or casualties [1]. Feed water treatment process (FWTP)
is a vital sub-process of a coal-red utility boiler. It shoulders the
supply of qualied feed water to the steam and water circuit. An
ion exchange based feed water treatment process typically con-
sists of cation beds, anion beds, mixed beds and other components
such as pumps, fans and pipes, etc. Process faults may make the
quality of feed water below its standard. That further results in
heavy salication along the heating surface of the utility boilers,
consequently, endanger the operation safety of the boilers. The
FWTPs are equipped with process sensors, such as pressure, ow
rate, and analysis meters, such as electric conductivity, oxygen,
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: tylzsr@163.com (Y. Tang).
silicon and natrium, etc. These sensors are the measuring parts of
the process control loops and supervisory systems. Relatively
speaking, sensors are the weak spots of process control systems
comparing with actuators, controllers and communication links
[2]. They may face certain faults such as drift, bias, strong noise
and broken line, which hinder the safe and stable operation of
industrial processes [3]. Hence, an effective fault detection algo-
rithm is much needed for FWTPs.
Actually, the demands for operation safety of process industries
have spurred the recent development of many fault detection
methodologies [47]. Most of them are established upon the
process sensors. The computer control systems, such as distributed
control systems (DCSs) and programmable controllers (PCs), have
the ability to store massive operation data of the processes. It
makes data-driven fault detection possible and practical. Multi-
variate statistical analysis is a typical data-driven methodology,
which has been intensively studied and applied to fault detection
in literature [813]. Principal component analysis (PCA), in-
dependent component analysis (ICA) and partial least square (PLS)
have been widely applied to chemical industries for fault detection
[1417]. In essence, they are all multivariate statistical analysis
based methods. Among these methods, PCA is the most popular
one and have been successfully applied to industrial proc-
esses owning to its simplicity, like in [1820]. PCA represents the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019
0019-0578/& 2017 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
2 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()
high-dimensional process data in a reduced dimension; then, the
desired information can be achieved by reducing the weak cor-
relations between the variables [2124]. PCA brings convenience
for fault detection of industrial processes. Two statistical hypoth-
esis tests, Hotelling T2 statistic in principal component space (PCS)
and SPE statistic in residual subspaces (RS), are generally con-
ducted in PCA. Some extensions of PCA are also proposed in the
literature with the purpose to improve certain performance of
PCA. In [25], an online fault detection framework, incorporating
multi-scale principal component analysis, is developed. An algo-
rithm using multisubspace principal component analysis with the
local outlier factor technique for process monitoring is further
proposed in [26].
As for our case at hand, when the classical PCA or the extended
PCA are applied to the FWTP, excessive false detections and missed
detections appear. It makes the classical PCA and its extended
versions not applicable for fault detection of FWTPs. The false
detections and missed detections are resulted by the uctuations
of T2 and SPE statistics. Analytically, PCA based fault detection is
strictly valid when the following assumptions are satised [27]:
(1) The process is operating at pseudo-steady state. (2) The process
data used to build the PCA model contain normal operating data
only. (3) The process should be properly excited. However, the
eld applications can hardly satisfy all these conditions. It is where
the uctuations of the test statistics come from; thus, the temporal
violations of the limits lead to false alarms. Naturally, a denoising
methodology is expected to be combined with PCA with a plain
purpose to deal with the uctuations of the two statistics. In [28],
an exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) ltering
method is applied to the sensor validity index (SVI) and SPE; and
an application research in terms of a boiler process shows that the
EWMA ltering method can indeed reduce the false alarms and
oscillations of the indicators. In [29], the above EWMA ltering
method is further integrated into a self-validating soft sensor.
Again, EWMA scheme is used to lter the monitoring indices of
KICA-PCA to improve monitoring performance [31]. In fact, de-
noising is a relatively broad topic in engineering elds. In this
paper, we employ wavelet transform (WT) technique for simplicity
and practicability purposes. Wavelet transform is a well-known
multi-resolution analysis because of its ability to obtain good time
and frequency resolution, simultaneously, through stretching and
translation of the wavelet. WT has been successfully used in
many elds, such as pattern recognition and fault diagnosis
[32,33]. Donoho et al. [34] rstly proposed a method to remove
white noise using wavelets, which is known as wavelet threshold
denoising. Within WT analysis, the signal is rstly decomposed
through discrete wavelet transform (DWT), so that the wavelet
coefcients can be obtained [35]. It is proven that the wavelet
coefcients resulted from noise are smaller than the coefcients of
major signal. With a predened threshold, the coefcients below
the level are intentionally eliminated. Now, a pure signal without
noise can be achieved through a reconstruction with the denoised
wavelet coefcients. In [36], a mechanical fault diagnosis method,
integrating wavelet transform with support vector machine, is
presented, where WT is used to extract the noise from the T2 and
SPE statistics of PCA such that the impact caused by noise can be
effectively restrained. In this paper, wavelet denoising (WD) will
be combined with PCA to form a new fault detection algorithm,
PCA-WD. Then, PCA-WD will be applied to a FWTP for verication.
In fact, the selection of the specic parameters has considerable
inuence on the performance of a WD. One way is to make a
decision with the priori knowledge of the engineers; however, it
relies too much on individual experience and cannot obtain an
optimal setting. This paper formulates the parameter selection of
WD as an optimization problem; and the solution to this problem
is an optimal parameter conguration. The objective function and
Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
the constraints of the optimization problem are complex, non-
contiguous and have strong nonlinearity. It makes the conven-
tional optimization techniques, such as linear programming (LP)
and dynamic programming (DP), not applicable. Computational
intelligence-based techniques, such as genetic algorithm (GA) and
particle swarm optimization (PSO), can be alternative to our
parameter optimization problem. In literature, PSO has been
widely used in many elds such as mechanical, chemical, civil, and
aerospace design, because of its advantages such as comparative
simplicity, rapid convergence and little parameters to be adjusted.
PSO is known to effectively solve large-scale nonlinear optimiza-
tion problems [37]; hence, it is a suitable candidate for our pro-
blem at hand. PSO is in fact an evolutionary computation techni-
que proposed by Kennedy and Eberhart [38]. Classical PSO deals
with real-valued variables; however, it is realized that many op-
timization problems in practice are featured by discrete variables,
where classical PSO cannot work. Then, Kennedy and Eberhart
extended classical PSO to a discrete binary version, named BPSO,
where a sigmoid function is used with a random probability for
generating binary-valued position (0 or 1) for a particle from its
real-valued velocity component [39]. Laskari et al. [40] proposed a
discrete PSO, where a real value is truncated to its nearest integer
value. It is then employed by Liao and Tseng [41] to deal with a
owshop scheduling problem. Moreover, a universal PSO is pro-
posed by Datta and Figueira [42]; it has the ability to work directly
with real, integer and discrete variables without extra conversions.
The parameter optimization problem of WD consists of several
kinds of variables; thus, the extended PSO is suitable and it will be
employed to get the optimal solutions.
From the application angle, this paper mainly focuses on the
fault detection of a feed water treatment process in coal-red
power plants to improve its reliability. We start with an outline of
the object process. Massive operation data of the process is then
collected from a supervisory information system (SIS), which
communicates with the control system of FWTP and acquires the
long term operation data. Next, the fault detection of FWTPs with
classical PCA will be introduced, where the control limits of T2 and
2
SPE statistics, notated by Tlim and SPElim are obtained, respectively.
And then, WD will be combined with PCA to form the PCA-WD
fault detection algorithm. The WD parameters need to be gured
out prior to the online operation of PCA-WD. The parameter se-
lection is formulated as an optimization problem, where PSO is
used to nd which combination of parameters gives the best
performance. A FWTP in a coal-red power plant, equipped with
two 1000 MW generation units, is taken as a study case. The real
operation data of the FWTP is collected to verify the PCA-WD al-
gorithm. We will present the results to show the effectiveness of
WD in dealing with the noises of T2 and SPE statistics, and the
capability of parameter optimization to determine the optimal
parameters of PCA-WD in an automatic way instead of on in-
dividual experience. Finally, the advantages of the optimized PCA-
WD, against classical PCA and SWPCA, will be proven with four
study cases as bias fault, drift fault, broken line fault and normal
condition.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
outlines the feed water treatment process, which will be used as
study case in the following investigations. In Section 3, the PCA
based fault detection algorithm will be reviewed. Section 4 com-
bines WD with PCA to form PCA-WD algorithm. And the para-
meter selection of PCA-WD is to be discussed, and nally for-
mulated as an optimization problem. In Section 5, the proposed
PCA-WD is applied the FWTP for verication study, where the
effectiveness of WD and the advantages of the optimized PCA-WD
will be proven with convincing results. The conclusions are drawn
in Section 7.
 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions () 3

2. Feed water treatment process According to the operating procedure, the FWTP is scheduled
as follows. When the water in the desalted water tanks is sufcient
FWTP is a vital sub-process of coal-red utility boiler. It aims to to sustain the boilers, the FWTP is switched off and on stand by.
supply qualied desalted water to the vapor circulating system of On the other hand, if the water levels of the tanks are below a
the boiler. The quality of the feed water is the primary concern of predened threshold, the FWTP will be switched on to produce
FWTPs. Unqualied feed water may cause salication along the qualied feed water. Further, the working status of the two op-
internal surface of critical devices, such as main steam pipes, re- eration routes is intentionally scheduled by the operators in order
heat steam pipes, turbine blades, etc.; gradually, it may lead to to even the total working time of the two routes. The operating
major safety hazards and bring economic loss for power plants. Ion procedure makes the FWTP working intermittently.
exchange is the most popular technology employed for FWTPs in A supervisory information system (SIS) is equipped with the
Chinese coal-red power plants. Lots of sensors, actuators are coal-red power plant, which gathers and stores long term op-
equipped with FWTPs for supervision and regulation purposes. eration data of the whole plant through certain interfaces between
There are more than 60 measuring points equipped with a FWTP. DCSs, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and other controllers.
Field experiences show that the sensor faults are the common
reasons for unqualied water supply. Hence, an effective sensor Table 1
Valves and sensors selected fault detection.
fault detection method is much needed for FWTPs. A FWTP in a
coal-red power plant in Guangdong province of China is taken as ID Description Unit ID Description Unit
our study case. The ow chart of the FWTP is shown in Fig. 1. This
power plant is equipped with two 1000 MW generation units; W1 Inlet valve status of 1# S4 Outlet pressure of 1# MPa
cation bed cation exchanger
hence, the FWTP is designed to sustain the two units. Raw water is W2 Outlet valve status of S5 Inlet ow rate of 1# anion m3/h
successively treated by cation beds, anion beds, mixed beds; then, 1# cation bed bed
the treated water is stored in desalted water tanks and nally W3 Inlet valve status of 1# S6 Inlet pressure of 1# anion MPa
pumped into the two utility boilers. The FWTP in Fig. 1 is cong- anion bed exchanger
W4 Outlet valve status of S7 Outlet pressure of 1# an- MPa
ured into two operation routes, side A and side B, to assure the 1# anion bed ion exchanger
reliability of the process. Side A consists of 1# cation bed, 1# anion W5 Inlet valve status of 1# S8 Electric conductivity of 1# us/cm
bed, and 1# mixed bed; and side B is formed by 2# cation bed, 2# mixed bed anion
anion bed, and 2# mixed bed. Generally, one route can satisfy the W6 Outlet valve status of S9 Inlet ow rate of 1# mixed m3/h
1# mixed bed bed
routine requirements of the two utility boilers; and the other route S1 Main pipe pressure of MPa S10 Inlet pressure of 1# mixed MPa
is on stand by. Hence, it is reasonable to take only one route for raw water ion exchanger
further study; specically, we take side A as the following study S2 Inlet ow rate of 1# m3/h S11 Outlet pressure of 1# MPa
case. For the consideration of data availability and further eld cation bed mixed ion exchanger
S3 Inlet pressure of 1# MPa S12 Electric conductivity of 1# us/cm
application, only part of the valves and sensors of side A, as listed
cation exchanger mixed bed
in Table 1, are selected for the following fault detection research.

to anion beds

raw water from secondary RO tank S1

acid from ejectors from water pump
from cation beds

S5 2# anion bed
S2 1# cation bed 2# cation bed 1# anion bed

W1 W3 S7

W2 S6 W4
S3

S4

S8

to mixed beds
to desalted water tanks

1# mixed bed 2# mixed bed

S9
1# desalted water 2# desalted water
tank tank

W5

S10
W6 S11

to utility boilers

S12 to laboratory

1# desalted 2# desalted 3# desalted 4# desalted

water pump water pump water pump water pump

1# in-house 2# in-house
to mixed, anion and cation beds water pump water pump

to acid, alkali storage system and

regenerative system

Fig. 1. Flow chart of the feed water treatment process.

Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
4 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()

It makes our data-driven fault detection research applicable and Mudholkar [10], that is,
convenient. The historical operation data of the FWTP is collected

from the SIS through a programm interface provided by the SIS C 22h02 h , (h 1)
SPElim = 1 + 1 + 2 0 20 ,
vendor with a sampling rate of 5 s. They are further used for the 1 1
(9)
following fault detection research.
where
m
3. PCA based fault detection i = ji (i = 1, 2, 3),
j=k+1 (10)
PCA is a multivariate statistical technique which has been
widely used in process fault detection. Let x Rm denote a sample and
vector containing m sensors. Assuming that there are n samples of 213
h0 = 1 .
these sensors with a constant sampling rate. Then a matrix 322 (11)
X Rn m is acquired; where each row represents a sample vector.
The matrix X is then standardized as follows to eliminate the ef- In Eq. (9), C is the upper fractile value of the standard normal
fect from different scales of the sensors. distribution with a signicance level of ; and j ( j = 1, , m) is
the jth largest eigenvalue of the covariance matrix S. In this paper,
X = D1[X IE(X)], (1)
both T2 and SPE statistics are taken into account for fault detection
where E (X) = [ 1, 2 , , m ] R1 m is the mean vector of X , and of FWTPs. Fault alarm is triggered when one of the two statistics
I = [1, 1, , 1]T Rn 1. In Eq. (1), D = diag{1, 2, , m}, where exceeds their corresponding control limits.
The procedure of classical PCA based fault detection is as
i = E (x i i )2 is the ith standard variance of X. For the stan-
follows.
T
dardized data matrix X , its correlation matrix S = X X/(n 1) is
calculated and singularly decomposed. Then, X is projected to the (1) Get the operation data of the FWTP under normal condition,
principal component space (PCS) and residual space (RS), namely, and normalize the data according to Eq. (1). The data is then
used to form a training data set for PCA models.
+ E = TP T + E,
X=X (2)
(2) Build a PCA model with the training data set, and calculate its
2
where X represents the projection of X in PCS and E is the residual Tlim and SPElim according to Eqs. (7) and (9), respectively.
matrix in RS. In Eq. (2), T Rn k is the score matrix and P Rm k (3) Collect a new sample from the FWTP under a similar condition
is the loading matrix, where k denotes the number of the principal as that in step (1), and calculate the real-time values of T2 and
components (PCs). Further, k is determined using cumulative SPE statistics.
percent variance (CPV) (4) If the real-time values of T2 and SPE statistics exceed their
control limits, the sample is regarded as abnormal and a fault
k
i = 1 i alarm is then triggered; otherwise, it is considered to be in
CPV = m l, normal condition.
i = 1 i (3)
(5) Repeat from step (3).
where i presents the ith largest eigenvalue of the covariance
matrix S. The threshold l is usually set between 0.85 and 0.99. We applied the above procedure to a FWTP of a power plant in our
For a new sample vector, x Rm , it is respectively projected previous work; unexpectedly, excessive false detections and mis-
into PCS and RS. Its projection in PCS, x^ , is as follows sed detections appear. It makes the classical PCA and the extended
PCA not applicable for fault detection of FWTPs. Analytically
^ = PP T x = C x,
x (4) speaking, the phenomena are mainly caused by the noises of T2
where C is the projection matrix to PCS. The projection in RS, e, is and SPE statistics. Naturally, a denoising technique is expected to
dened as follows solve the problem. In the following section, WD technique is in-
tentionally combined with PCA to deal with the noise problems.

e = (I PP T )x = C x, (5)

where C is the projection matrix to RS.
Generally, the PCA based process fault detection is conducted 4. PCA-WD based fault detection
through two indices as Hotelling T2 and SPE statistics. The T2
statistic is dened as 4.1. Wavelet denoising

T2 = x ^ T = t1t T ,
^ P1P T x (6) Wavelet transform is a powerful signal-processing method. It
transforms time-domain signals into timefrequency domain
where = diag (1, , k ) represents the k largest eigenvalues of while obtaining high resolution time and frequency information of
covariance matrix S, and t represents the score vector of x ^ . The
the signals simultaneously. The mathematical denition of con-
2
control limit of T2 statistic, i.e. Tlim , is calculated as follows tinuous wavelet transform (CWT) is described as
k(n2 1) 1
2
Tlim =
n(n k )
F(k, n k ),
(7)
CWTf (a, ) =
| a|
R f (t ) * t a dt,

(12)
where F (k , n k ) is the critical point of F-distribution; and is the where a is the scale factor which may be regarded as the inverse of
condence. k and n
k in Eq. (7) are the degree of freedom. The frequency, is the translation factor, and (x ) is the base function.
SPE statistic is calculated as follows In practice, CWT is not widely applied due to its enormous com-
putation caused by the fact that all the scales are used during the
SPE = x 2 = C x 2 . (8)
computation progress. Compared with CWT, DWT requires less
The control limit of the SPE statistic was developed by Jackson and computation time so that it will not degrade the signal-processing

Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()
Fig. 2. Three level decomposition.
performance; hence, DWT is widely used in many elds. Speci-
cally, Mallat proposed a fast algorithm [35], which makes use of
the fact that the analysis will be very efcient if scales and posi-
tions are chosen based on power of two (dyadic scales factor and
translation factor). Mallat fast algorithm has the ability to obtain
the same accuracy as the other DWTs, while consuming much less
computation. It will be employed in the following study.
Let (t ) be an original signal, a three level decomposition of (t )
using the fast algorithm is specially shown in Fig. 2 to illustrate its
process, where H0, H1 are the low-pass and high-pass lters, re-
spectively. 2 is dened as a down-sample process. Within the
three level decomposition, (t ) is expressed as
(t ) = d1k + d2k + d3k + a3k .
Now, the signal (t ) is decomposed into a set of detail coefcients
d1k, d2k, d3k and approximation coefcient a3k.
In 1990, Donoho proposed a method to remove white noise
using wavelets [34]; that is, wavelet denoising (WD). WD de-
composes the signal through discrete wavelet transform to obtain
the wavelet coefcients, which are then processed with a pre-
dened threshold. The coefcients below the level are eliminated;
while the ones above the level remain. Finally, the denoised signal
is extracted from the remaining coefcients without much loss in
original signal characteristics.
4.2. PCA-WD
Now, WD will be combined with PCA to form an innovative
PCA-WD method for fault detection, where WD is intentionally
employed to deal with the noises of T2 and SPE statistics. The
owchart of PCA-WD for process fault detection is as shown in
Fig. 3. PCA-WD fault detection is divided into two stages: off-line
2
modeling stage and on-line detection stage. The calculation of Tlim
and SPElim are carried out at off-line modeling stage. On-line de-
tection stage includes the calculation of real-time T2 and SPE sta-
tistics, WD, and fault detection. Specically, WD is employed to
denoise T2 and SPE statistics during on-line stage as shown in
Fig. 3.
In off-line modeling stage, a training data set X Rn m , col-
lected under certain normal operation condition, is used to de-
2
velop the PCA model; as such, the control limits of T2 and SPE, Tlim
and SPElim, are obtained. In the on-line detection stage, for a new
coming sample x, its T2 and SPE statistics are rstly calculated.
Then, the real-time T2 and SPE statistics slide into a window,
where WD is applied to denoise their noises. Finally, the denoised
2
T2 and SPE statistics are compared with Tlim and SPElim, respec-
tively; and a fault alarm is triggered if one of the two statistics
exceeds its control limit. Here, the ltering activity is used to
eliminate the noise of the statistics and does not dramatically
change their distributions. Even, [29] shows that the ltered re-
siduals are closer to normal distribution than unltered residuals.
Mathematically, the ltering algorithms may bring changes to the
control limits of the statistics. In [29], a theoretical analysis of the
control limits with and without ltering is given; and examples
are used to convince this ltering technique. This technique is also
accepted by other researchers. For instance, in [30], a detection
index is composed upon the ltered statistics to improve the
Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
5
(13)
Fig. 3. Flowchart of PCA-WD fault detection.
detectability of PCA. Our approach is a combination of PCA and
WD; in fact, it uses WD to lter the statistics of PCA as well.
Moreover, the WD in our framework is properly designed to make
sure that its amplication factor equals 1. Thus, the control limits
2
Tlim and SPElim, obtained in off-line modeling stage, can be used in
on-line detection stage.
Now, another problem arises. The application of WD algorithm
involves serval parameters. The parameter conguration has great
effect on WD performance; even makes a WD algorithm un-
applicable under certain conditions. The parameter selection has
become a barrier for eld application of WD. Our case combines
WD with PCA, where WD is used to denoise the real-time T2 and
SPE statistics. It makes the parameter selection of the compound
PCA-WD more complicated than traditional WD applications. The
common experience based techniques have no chance to deal with
our problem properly. We come out with an idea to formulate the
parameter selection of PCA-WD as an optimization problem and
get the optimal parameters through optimization solution. For the
purpose of the optimization problem formulation, the parameters
of PCA-WD are to be reviewed in advance.
4.3. Parameters of PCA-WD
4.3.1. Sliding window parameters
In our PCA-WD algorithm, WD is employed to denoise the real-
time T2 and SPE statistics with a sliding window; the denoised T2
and SPE statistics are then used for fault detection. Thus, proper
sliding window length and moving step, notated by len and step,
respectively, have to be determined prior to the application of
PCA-WD. Due to dyadic down-sample, the length of wavelet
coefcients is reduced by a factor of 2j, where j is the scale factor.
To ensure the perfect reconstruction of original signal, len must be
chosen as a power of 2. step determines how many samples will be
involved in and dropped out of the sliding window in a single
calculation. Generally, large step brings large time delay; while
small one may cause discontinuity in signal.
4.3.2. Wavelets
Our research considers only orthogonal wavelets partially for
simplicity reason; in fact, they are able to obtain perfect reconstruction
6 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()
Table 2
Threshold selection rules.
Rules Descriptions
rigrsure Selection using Steins Unbiased Risk Estimate (SURE)
sqtwolog Fixed threshold
heursure Selection using a mixture of the rst two options
minimaxi Selection using the minimax principle
of the original signals. Specically, Mallat fast algorithm is used in this
paper due to its efcient computation, where the wavelets are re-
quired to have orthogonality property along with a scaling function .
There are several wavelets satisfying the above requirements, as Haar,
Daubechies, Symlets and Coiets.
The Daubechies family, built by Inrid Daubechies, consists of 45
wavelets, where Haar wavelet is actually the rst and simplest
wavelet. The Daubechies family has no explicitly mathematical
denition except Haar wavelet. The Symlet family are more sym-
metrical than Daubechies family; however it is not strictly sym-
metrical. The Coiet family consists of 5 wavelets. For detailed
descriptions of the wavelets refer relevant literatures.
In this paper, the rst 15 wavelets of Daubechies family and the
rst 15 wavelets of Symlet family will be utilized. The remaining
wavelets of the two families are rather complex; consequently,
they require more computation time, which makes them not
applicable for our eld application. Meanwhile, all the 5 wavelets
of Coiet family are used in the paper due to their computation
efciency. In the following of the paper, db1, db2, , db15 are
used to notate the rst 15 wavelets of Daubechies family,
sym1, sym2, , sym15 are used for the 15 wavelets of Symlet fa-
mily, and coif 1, coif 2, , coif 5 are used for Coiet family,
respectively.
4.3.3. Threshold parameters
There are two common thresholding methods for WD, as soft
thresholding and hard thresholding. Let WT be the wavelet coef-
cients and be the threshold; then the two thresholding meth-
ods can be respectively expressed as follows.
(i) Hard thresholding
WT , |WT | > ;
WT =
0, |WT | . (14)
(ii) Soft thresholding
WT , WT > ;
WT = 0, |WT | ;
WT + , WT < . (15)
Compared with hard thresholding, soft thresholding has better
performance because hard thresholding may cause discontinuities
at while soft thresholding remains continuous by shrinking
nonzero coefcients towards zero.
Four threshold selection rules, rigrsure, sqtwolog, heursure
and minimaxi, as shown in Table 2 will be considered in this
paper. In fact, these threshold selection rules use statistical re-
gression of the noisy coefcients over time to acquire a non-
parametric estimation of the reconstructed signal. Different
threshold selection rule has different impact on denoising
performance.
Threshold rescaling method also affects the denoising perfor-
mance; it needs investigation as well. The general model of wa-
velet denoising is as follows:
s(n) = f (n) + e(n), (16)
Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
Table 3
Threshold rescaling methods.
Rescaling methods Descriptions
one Select using the basic noise model
sln Select using the basic noise model with unscaled noise
mln Select using the basic noise model with non-Gaussian
white noise
where s(n) is the original signal, f(n) is the pure signal without
noise, e(n) represents noise, s is the noise intensity. The denoising
process is to suppress the noisy part of signal s(n) so as to recover
the pure signal f(n) without noise. Threshold rescaling intends to
adjust s with certain method; obviously, it has inuence on the
denoising process. Three threshold rescaling methods as one,
sln, and mln are investigated in this paper. The brief descriptions
of these methods are described in Table 3.
4.3.4. Decomposition level
Generally speaking, the decomposition level, notated by lev,
should be determined in consideration of the frequency band-
width of the original signals. Signals with abundant high-fre-
quency information need larger numbers of decomposition levels.
Large lev requires more computation time and brings time delay.
Meanwhile, the length of sliding window, len, bounds lev as well,
because the dyadic down-sample halves the length of wavelet
coefcients in a single decomposition progress. For instance, if
len16 the maximum value of lev should be 4. In this paper, the
decomposition level is bounded within a range between 1 and 5.
4.4. Optimal parameter selection of PCA-WD
4.4.1. Formulation of the parameter selection optimization problem
The parameters of WD, as reviewed above, have more or less
effect on the performance of WD algorithm. The traditional way to
determine the WD parameters is mostly based on individual ex-
perience. In this paper, WD is combined with PCA to form a fault
detection algorithm. Thus, the parameter selection of the com-
pound PCA-WD algorithm is far more complicated than traditional
applications of WD. We come out with an innovative idea to for-
mulate the parameter selection of PCA-WD as an optimization
problem. And the optimal parameter conguration is then ob-
tained through the solution of the optimization problem. The
optimal parameter selection gets the parameters in an automatic
way rather on individual experience and grantees the optimality of
the parameters.
Our optimization problem does not consider WD algorithm
itself only; instead, it takes the PCA-WD fault detection algorithm
as a whole to optimize its parameters. Naturally, the performance
criteria from the fault detection perspective, as false alarm rate
(FAR) and missed detection rate (MDR), should be integrated into
the objective function of the optimization problem. They are de-
ned as follows.
(I) False alarm rate: FAR is described as Eq. (17), which re-
presents the percentage of the falsely alarmed samples to the total
faultless data samples:
falsely alarmed samples
FAR = %
faultless data samples (17)
(II) Missed detection rate: MDR is calculated as Eq. (18), re-
presenting the percentage of the missed faulty samples to the total
faulty data samples:
missed faulty samples
MDR = %
faulty data samples (18)
 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions () 7

The above two criteria evaluate the performance of fault detection int Ct2 = 0;
algorithm under faultless and faulty conditions, respectively. The
for (i = 0; i < = t2; i ++)
lower the two criteria are, the better performance the algorithm
has achieved. Moreover, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a traditional {
measure of denoising algorithms from signal conditioning per-
spective. It is dened as follows:
(
if T2(i) < Tlim
2
) (
&& SPE(i) < SPElim )
Ct2 = Ct2 + 1;
(
SNR = 10 log10 powersignal /powernoise , ) (19) }
Then, MDR Xt2 = Ct 2/t2(%). In Eq. (22), is a weighting factor; it is
where
used to balance the criteria from the fault detection perspective
1 and from the signal conditioning perspective. It makes our opti-
powersignal = s(n)2, mization problem capable of satisfying different purposes by
n (20)
n
tuning the value of . Specically, can be set to a value larger
than 6 so as to guarantee lower FDR and MDR; on the other hand,
and a value smaller than 6 leads to higher SNR of original signals. This
paper pays more attention on FDR and MDR of fault detection;
1 furthermore, is intentionally set to 6.8 in the following in-
powernoise = [s(n) s(n)]2 .
n n (21) vestigation. Mathematically speaking, 6.8 is capable of elim-
inating the dimension differences between the two terms of
powersignal in Eq. (20) represents the power of the original signal, JX (Pr).
V
and powernoise in Eq. (21) is the power of the noise. s(n) denotes Finally, the parameter selection of PCA-WD is formulated as an
the original signal and s(n) is the denoised signal. Generally, higher optimization problem as follows:
SNR is expected, for it indicates less information loss through the
max JX (Pr) = e (SNR T 2 + SNR SPE)
denoising process. V

It is reasonable to formulate the objective function both from + (1 e )/(FDR Xt1 + MDR Xt 2 + 1), (23)
the fault detection perspective and signal conditioning perspec-
tive. Specically, the objective function is expressed as follows: s.t.

FAR Xt1 = Ct1/t1(%),

JX (Pr) = e (SNR T 2 + SNR SPE)
V MDR Xt 2 = Ct2/t2(%),
+ (1 e )/(FDR Xt1 + MDR Xt 2 + 1). (22) t t
2
SNR T 2 = 10 log10 T2 [T2(t ) T2(t )]2 ,
i=1 i=1
The optimization problem is to maximize JX , while satisfying the
V t t
relevant constraints. In Eq. (22), XV Rt m is a selected data set for SNR SPE = 10 log10 SPE(t )2 [SPE(t ) SPE(t )]2 ,
verication; and t is the sample number. Furthermore, XV is i=1 i=1
composed to contain a subset X t1, which has t1 faultless samples, 2
T = WDPr (T ), 2

and a subset X t2, consisting of t2 faulty samples. And, t = t1 + t2.

SPE = WDPr (SPE),
Pr = [p1, p2 , , p7] in Eq. (22) denotes the parameter vector of WD;
^ P1PT x
T2j = x ^ , ( j = 1, , t ),
in fact, it is the variable to be optimized. SNR T 2 and SNR SPE are the j j
signal-to-noise ratios of T2 and SPE statistics, respectively; which 2
SPEj = C xj , ( j = 1, , t )
are calculated using Eq. (19). FAR Xt1 in Eq. (22) is calculated using
Pr = [ p1, p2 , , p7 ],
subset X t1. The falsely alarmed samples, Ct1, are rstly obtained as
follows: > 0.
^ , ( j = 1, , t ) , is the jth sample of the verication data set. The
x j
int Ct1 = 0;
score matrix P and projection matrix C are obtained through the
for (i = 0; i < = t1; i ++) training process of the PCA model at the off-line stage. The solu-
[p , p , , p ], is the optimal parameters
{ tion to this problem, Pr 1 2 7
of our PCA-WD fault detection algorithm. Now, we face the pro-
(
if T2(i) > Tlim
2
) ( SPE(i) > SPE )
lim blem of solving the above optimization problem.

Ct1 = Ct1 + 1;
} Obviously, the objective function and some constraints are
where T 2 and SPE are denoised PCA statistics using WD algorithm.
T 2 = WDPr (T 2) and SPE = WDPr (SPE), where WDPr means a de-
noising process with the parameter vector Pr and T2 and SPE are
obtained according to Eqs. (8) and (6), respectively. Then, FAR is
calculated as FAR Xt1 = Ct1/t1(%). Similarly, MDR Xt2 is calculated with
subset X t2. The un-detected faulty samples are calculated as fol-
lows:
4.4.2. Solving of the optimization problem
nonlinear and even non-analytical. It makes the classical optimi-
zation techniques, such as linear programming (LP), dynamic
programming (DP), not feasible for our problem. Intelligence-
based techniques such as genetic algorithm (GA) and PSO can be
solutions to the problem. In literature, PSO has been widely used
in many elds such as mechanical, chemical, civil, and aerospace
design, because it has advantages such as comparative simplicity,
rapid convergence and little parameters to be adjusted. PSO is
known to effectively solve large-scale nonlinear optimization

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ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
8 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()

problems; it is suitable for our problem at hand. Table 4

PSO is a stochastic search method which was rstly introduced Description of the parameter vector.
by Kennedy and Eberhart [38]. The main strategy of PSO is to
Elements Content Code Description
utilize the social behaviors and the communications involved in
swarms such as bird ocking and sh schooling. Each particle in p1 sym1,,smy15, db1,,db15, [1,35] Wavelet species
PSO is treated as a volumeless particle in g-dimensional searching coif1,,coif5
p2 soft thresholding, hard [1,2] Threshold method
space; its velocity and position are adjusted according to its past thresholding
and companions experience. p3 rigrsure, sqtwolog, heursure, [1,4] Threshold selection rule
PSO starts from a random swarm of particles called initial po- minimaxi
pulation in the g-dimensional searching space. Let the swarm size p4 one, sln, mln [1,3] Threshold rescaling
method
be U, the position and velocity of each particle are dened as p5 1,2,3,4,5 [1,5] Decomposition level
Pi(t ) = [ pi,1(t ), pi,2(t ), , pi,g (t )], p6 256, 128, 64, 32 [1,4] Length of sliding window
(24) p7 1,2,3,,32 [1,32] Step of sliding window

and
Vi(t ) = [vi,1(t ), vi,2(t ), , vi,g(t )],
respectively, where i = 1, 2, , U , represents the ith particle and t
denotes the iteration time. The velocity Vi(t ) and position Pi(t ) of
each particle are iteratively modied according to the following
rules:
vi(t + 1) = vi, d(t ) + c1(t )r1(t )(Pbi, d(t ) Pi, d(t ))
+ c2(t )r2(t )(Pg, d(t ) Pi, d(t ))
pi, d (t + 1) = pi, d (t ) + vi, d(t )
where d = 1, 2, , g represents the dth member of a particle, r1(t )
and r2(t ) are random numbers, generated from a uniform dis-
tribution in the range [0,1], to provide a stochastic weighting for
components involved in Eq. (26). The constants c1 and c2 represent
the weights of stochastic acceleration terms that pull each particle
toward its pbest and gbest, respectively. The inertia weight factor
is used as a trade-off between global and local exploration
capabilities of the swarm. A large inertia weight factor tends to
facilitate global exploration, while a small one facilitates local
exploration.
In practice, generally decreases linearly from 1.2 down to
0.4 during the iterations. Specically, the inertia weight factor ,
in this paper, is generated as follows.
max min
= max iter
itermax
where itermax denotes the maximum iteration number, and iter
represents the current iteration.
In the procedures above, the velocity vi, d(t ) and position pi, d(t ) of
each particle are imposed a bound to prevent the swarm over
exploration. The maximum and the minimum velocities are de-
ned as v max
d and v min
d ; and the maximum and the minimum po-
sitions are notated by pmax and pmin .
d d
Thus, if vi, d(t ) > v max max
d , then vi, d(t ) = v d ; if vi, d(t ) < v d , then
vi, d(t ) = v dmin .
If pi, d(t ) > pdmax , then pi, d(t ) = pdmax ; if
pi, d(t ) = pdmin .
Eqs. (26) and (27) are iterated until convergence is reached.
Each particle tracks its coordinates in the search space, which
means the best solution achieved by ith particle, called pbest and
notated as Pbi(t ) Rg . Accordingly, the global best value is called
gbest and notated as Pg(t ) Rg , representing the overall best so-
lution obtained by the particles in the swarm.
Specically, a particle P(t) in our problem is dened as follows,
which in fact represents a potential solution to the optimization
problems:
(25) P(t ) = [p1(t ), p2(t ), , p7(t )], (29)
where pj (t ) ( j = 1, , 7) represents a specic element of the
parameter vector; and t represents the iteration time. The para-
meter vector is described in Table 4. According to the denitions as
shown in Table 4, each parameter element is coded so as to imply
specic meaning with different values. For example, p1 = 30 im-
(26) plies db15 wavelet; moreover, a WD parameter conguration as
P = [16, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 5] implies db1 wavelet, soft thresholding,
sqtwolog threshold selection rule, mln threshold rescaling
(27) method, 3 level decomposition, 64 lengths and 5 steps of sliding
window.
5. Fault detection of FWTP
In this section, the proposed fault detection algorithms will be
applied to the FWTP as outlined in Section 2 for verication pur-
pose. We just take side A of the FWTP as study case because side B
is very similar to side A. Further, only part of the valves and sen-
sors of side A, as listed in Table 3, are selected for fault detection
research because they are accessible through the SIS of the power
plant. In fact, the FWTP of a utility boiler are intermittently op-
erated due to its unique operating procedure. Generally, the PCA
based algorithms can hardly deal with the problems resulting from
(28) the alterative working condition of industrial processes. In this
paper, the whole working phase are rstly distinguished into
several conditions; and the PCA based algorithms are applied to
the same or similar working conditions. With a deep analysis of
the owchart and operating procedure, we found the working
conditions of side A can distinguish with the status of relevant
values. Thus, W1,,W6 in Table 1 are used for working condition
classication only; and S1,,S12 are selected sensors for fault
detection of the FWTP.
min
The operation data is collected from the SIS of the plant
through a OPC (OLE for Process Control) interface. 500 samples of
pi, d(t ) < pmin
d
, then the 12 sensors, under a kind of typical working condition, are
collected with a sampling rate of 5 s. They are further used to form
a training data set. Another 1000 samples, under the same work-
ing condition but within different time period, are collected for
fault detection validation. For a mature industrial process as
FWTPs, it is not easy to capture its abnormal operation conditions.
Hence, we intentionally introduce several kinds of faults to the
operation data to simulate the operation conditions with faults.
One thing to note is that in the following studies the same training
data set and verication data set are applied to different algo-
rithms for fair comparison study.

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 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()
80
T2 statistic
60
T2lim
40
T2
20
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
30
SPE statistic
SPElim
20
SPE
10
0 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
Fig. 4. Statistics of classical PCA. (For interpretation of the references to color in
this gure caption, the reader is referred to the web version of this paper.)
5.1. Application of classical PCA
First of all, the classical PCA is investigated. It is applied to the
FWTP according to the procedure proposed in Section 3. Speci-
cally, the detection ability of the approach with respect to single
fault from a sensor is veried. The inlet ow rate of 1# anion bed,
S5, is used as study case. A constant deviation fault is intentionally
added to S5 from samples 401 to 800. The T2 and SPE statistics of
classical PCA fault detection algorithm are illustrated in Fig. 4. The
blue solid line represents the real-time statistics and the red dash
lines denote the corresponding control limits. It can be seen that
under the normal working condition a number of samples exceed
T2 control limit, which brings false alarms if the fault criterion is
strictly applied. On the other hand, the SPE values of some samples
do not surpass its control limit under fault condition, which tends
to miss fault alarms. The problems are mainly caused by the noise
of T2 and SPE statistics. We carried out several studies where faults
are added to different sensors; and the similar results are gotten. It
shows that the classical PCA is not applicable for fault detection of
the FWTP.
5.2. Application of PCA-WD
This paper intends to deal with the noise of T2 and SPE statistics
with wavelet denoising. A WD step is attached to T2 and SPE sta-
tistics before fault detection as shown in Fig. 3. The same training
data set and verication data set as above are applied to PCA-WD
with and without optimal parameter selection. The application
procedure of PCA-WD is shown in Fig. 3.
5.2.1. PCA-WD without parameter optimization
Accordingly, a constant deviation fault is intentionally added to
S5 from samples 401 to 800 to test the performance of PCA-WD.
Here, the WD parameters are determined through calculation
analysis of cases; in other words, the parameters are selected
mostly on the researcher's experience. The parameters of WD and
sliding window are listed as below.
 Coieft 4 wavelet.
 Decomposition level 3.
 Threshold parameters: soft thresholding method, sqtwolog
threshold selection rules, sln threshold rescaling method.
 Sliding window length len 256, and sliding window step
step 32.
The T2 and SPE statistics of PCA-WD fault detection algorithm
with the above parameters are illustrated in Fig. 5. It can be seen
Please cite this article as: Zhang S, et al. Fault detection of feed water treatment process using PCA-WD with parameter optimization.
ISA Transactions (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2017.03.019i
9
80
T2 statistic
60
T2lim
40
T2
20
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
30
SPE statistic
20 SPElim
SPE
10
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
Fig. 5. Statistics of PCA-WD without parameter optimization.
that both T2 and SPE statistics of the samples between 401 and
800, where the fault is introduced, go up beyond their control
limits. On the other hand, during the periods without fault, T2 and
SPE go down below their limits. Fig. 5 demonstrates that the PCA-
WD algorithm, with meticulously selected parameters, is capable
of detecting the fault, more precisely. The FDR and MDR, compared
with classical PCA, are much lower.
However, the performance of PCA-WD is sensitive to the WD
parameter selection. Poorly selected parameters may decrease the
performance of PCA-WD. The empirical WD parameter selection
relies too much on individual's experience. And, it is time con-
suming and cannot get the optimal parameter conguration. A
better way proposed in this paper is to obtain the parameters with
certain optimization techniques.
5.3. PCA-WD with parameter optimization
In Eq. (23), the parameter selection of PCA-WD is formulated as
an optimization problem, which takes the parameter vector of WD
as the optimization variable. In literature, PSO algorithm has been
successfully employed to solve complex optimization problems. In
this paper, PSO is also used to determine the optimal parameters
of PCA-WD. The aim of the PSO method is to determine which set
of parameters, i.e. wavelet species, p1, threshold method, p2,
threshold selection rules, p3, threshold rescaling method, p4, the
decomposition level p5, length and step of sliding window, p6 and
p7, is optimal for fault detection. Here, the parameters of PCA-WD
are coded as integers, as shown in Table 4; hence, the real values of
the parameters must be rounded to its nearest integer values
during each iteration.
The same training data set, containing 500 samples, and the same
verication data set, containing another 1000 samples, are used to
verify the PCA-WD with parameter optimization. Further, a bias fault,
with the amplitude of 8% of the sensor mean value, is intentionally
introduced to sensor S5 between 401 and 800 samples. The PCA
model is rstly built with the training data set to get the score matrix
P , the projection matrix C and the control limits of the two statistics
2
as Tlim and SPElim . Then, the verication data set is applied to the
parameter selection problem as shown in Eq. (23), where t1000,
t1 700, and t2 300. PSO is used to solve the optimization problem.
The parameters of PSO are specically explained as follows.
 Generally, the population size implies a balance between ac-
curacy, stability, computation time and dimension. In our case,
population size is set to 50.
 Inertia weight factor is a trade-off between global and local
exploration capabilities of the swarms. It is set according to
Eq. (24), where max 1.2 and min 0.4.
10 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()

1.2 60
T2 statistic
1 40 T2lim
objective function

T2
0.8 20

0.6
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0.4 samples

60
0.2 SPE statistic
0 10 20 30 40 50 SPElim
iteration 40

SPE
Fig. 6. Objective function value. 20

Table 5 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
Optimal parameters of PCA-WD. samples

Component Parameter Value (a) classical PCA

p1 Wavelet species db15

50
p2 Sliding window step 22 T2 statistic
p3 Threshold method soft 40 T2lim
p4 Threshold selection rule sqtwolog 30

T2
p5 Threshold rescaling method sln
20
p6 Decomposition level 3
p7 Sliding window length 256 10
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples

60
 The lower and upper bounds of pd, pmin
d
and pmax
d
are set ac- SPE statistic
SPElim
cording to Table 4. 40
 The limits of velocity change must be within a reasonable
SPE

bound. We set v max

d = pmax
d
/2 and v min
d = pmax
d
/2, so as to avoid 20
over exploration.
 The acceleration constants c1 and c2 represent the weights of 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
stochastic acceleration terms toward local and global best, re- samples
spectively. In our case, c1 1.2 and c2 1.2. (b) PCA-WD with parameter optimization
 Weighting factor = 6.8.
Fig. 7. T2 and SPE statistics with classical PCA and optimized PCA-WD. (For inter-
pretation of the references to color in this gure caption, the reader is referred to
Actually, the parameter selection of PSO is a rather broad topic. the web version of this paper.)
This paper focuses on the application of PSO, instead of the PSO
algorithm itself. Its parameters are selected through sample cal- Table 6
culation analysis. The optimization process is shown in Fig. 6, Performance comparison between classical PCA and optimized PCA-WD.
where the objective function converges to its maximum value,
Statistics FDR (%) MDR (%) SNR
1.04, after 20th iteration. Meanwhile, FDR 0%, MDR 0%,
SNRT 2 18.13 and SNRSPE 16.50 when the parameter vector gets T2 SPE T2 SPE T2 SPE
its optimal value. The solution to the optimization problem,
Pr [ p1, p2 , , p7], contains the optimal parameter conguration Classical PCA 1.5 8.33 0 10.8
Optimized PCA-WD 0 0 0 0 18.13 16.50
of the PCA-WD algorithm, as shown in Table 5.
For comparison, the T2 and SPE statistics in terms of the ver-
ication data set, with classical PCA and optimized PCA-WD, are
shown in Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively, where the blue solid line Table 7
Fault descriptions.
represents the real-time statistics and the red dash line denotes
the corresponding control limit. During the faultless conditions, as Study cases Fault description Fault samples
1500 and 8011000, the T2 and SPE statistics of classical PCA
uctuate heavily. It is the source of false detection under faulty Normal condition
Bias fault d1 = 8% 501800
condition and missed detection under faultless condition. On the
Drift fault d2 = 0.05(k 300) 501800
contrary, the optimized PCA-WD has the ability to achieve precise
Broken line d3 = 0 501800
fault detection (FDR 0% and MDR 0%); because the WD part can
eliminate the effect of the noise of T2 and SPE statistics dramati-
cally. The performance criteria of classical PCA and optimized PCA- the only difference is the way to determine the parameters. The
WD are listed in Table 6 for quantitative comparison purpose. FDR PCA-WD with optimization excels in getting the optimal para-
and MDR are the core criteria of fault detection algorithms. In meters in an automatical and deterministic way.
Table 6, the FDR and MDR of T2 and SPE of classical PCA are 9.83%
and 10.8%; comparatively, both FDR and MDR of the optimized
PCA-WD are zero. The results show that the optimized PCA-WD 6. Comparative studies
can improve the fault detection performance greatly.
The results from PCA-WD with and without parameter opti- The above section demonstrates the application of PCA-WD
mization are similar, because the two algorithms are identical and and makes a comparative analysis between classical PCA, PCA-WD

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 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions () 11

40
T2 statistic T2 statistic
100
30 T2lim T2lim

T2
20
T2

50
10
0
0 0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
samples
30
20
SPE statistic SPE statistic
15 SPElim SPElim
20

SPE
SPE

10
10
5
0
0 0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 200 400 600 800 1000 samples
samples
(a) statistics of PCA
(a) statistics of PCA

40 T2 statistic
T2 statistic 100
T2lim
30 T2lim

T2
20 50
T2

10
0
0 0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 200 400 600 800 1000 samples
samples

20 40 SPE statistic
SPE statistic
SPElim
SPElim 30
15 SPE
20
SPE

10
10
5
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 samples
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
(b) statistics of SWPCA
(b) statistics of SWPCA

40 T2 statistic
100
T2 statistic T2lim
30 T2lim
T2

50
20
T2

10 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 samples
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples 30
SPE statistic
20
SPE statistic SPElim
20
15 SPElim
SPE

10
SPE

10

5 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
0 samples
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples (c) statistics of optimized PCA-WD
(c) statistics of PCA-WD Fig. 9. Fault detection results under bias fault.
Fig. 8. Fault detection results under normal condition.
amplitude varies linearly with time, as

without optimization and PCA-WD with optimization. However, d = 0.05 (k 300),

the results are obtained only with constant deviation fault; logi-
cally, it cannot guarantee the electiveness of PCA-WD under other
kinds of faults. To thoroughly test the advantages of optimized
PCA-WD, some comparative studies between classical PCA,
SWPCA, and optimized PCA-WD are to be carried out. Specically,
four study cases, as listed in Table 7, are used.
Study Case 1: Normal condition without any fault.
Study Case 2: Bias fault is added to S5 from 501 to 800 with a
amplitude of 8% of its mean value.
Study Case 3: Drift fault is added to S2 from 501 to 800; and its
where d is the fault amplitude and k is the sample number.
Study Case 4: Broken line fault is introduced to S8 from 501 to
800; which is implemented by setting the amplitude of S8 to zero.
For fair comparisons between the algorithms, the same training
data set in the above section is applied to the algorithms. More-
over, the threshold of CPV l and condence limit are set to 85%
and 99%, respectively; and the sliding window length of SWPCA is
set to 500. Here, the PCA-WD takes the optimized parameters as
shown in Table 5 in the following investigations.

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12 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions ()

250 600
200 T2 statistic T2 statistic
150 T2lim 400 T2lim
T2

T2
100
200
50
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 0
samples 0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
60
SPE statistic 40
40 SPElim SPE statistic
30 SPElim
SPE

20

SPE
20

0 10
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
(a) statistics of PCA samples

(a) statistics of PCA

250
2
200 T statistic
T2lim 600
T2 statistic
150
T2lim
T2

100 400

T2
50
200
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
60 samples
SPE statistic
SPElim 100
40 SPE statistic
SPE

SPElim
20
SPE

50

0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
(b) statistics of SWPCA samples

(b) statistics of SWPCA

250
200 T2 statistic 500
T2lim T2 statistic
150
T2lim
T2

100
250
T2

50
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
60 samples
SPE statistic
40
SPElim SPE statistic
40
30 SPElim
SPE

SPE

20 20

10
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
samples
(c) statistics of PCA-WD
(c) statistics of PCA-WD method
Fig. 10. Fault detection results under drift fault.
Fig. 11. Fault detection results under broken line fault.

6.1. Study Case 1: normal condition 6.2. Study Case 2: bias fault

Firstly, the original operation data set of the FWTP under nor-
mal condition, from SIS of the plant, is directly taken as verica-
tion data set. It is then applied to classical PCA SWPCA, and PCA-
WD with optimization, respectively; and the results are compared
in Fig. 8. If the fault criterion is strictly applied, both classical PCA
and SWPCA cause false detection under faultless conditions; on
the contrary, PCA-WD operates normally without any false alarm
(FDR 0%). Consequently, under normal conditions, the optimized
PCA-WD shows better fault detection performance comparing
with the classical PCA and SWPCA, due to its ability to restrain the
uctuation of T2 and SPE statistics.
Secondly, a bias fault is deliberately introduced to S5 from 501
to 800 with an amplitude of 8% of its mean value to form a ver-
ication data set. The data set is then respectively applied to the
3 fault detection algorithms with the results as shown in Fig. 9.
Under the faultless conditions, as 1500 and 8011000, both
classical PCA and SWPCA bring false alarms. And the two algo-
rithms also cause missed detections under the faulty condition
from 501 to 800. Fig. 9 shows that the optimized PCA-WD works
well under both faultless and faulty conditions. In a word, the
optimized PCA-WD outperforms the classical PCA and SWPCA in
dealing with bias fault.

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 S. Zhang et al. / ISA Transactions () 13

Table 8 boiler, in practice, sensor faults tend to cause severe consequences.

FDR and MDR of different methods. An effective fault detection algorithm is much needed to improve
the reliability of FWTPs. Classical PCA has been employed to the
Cases Algorithms FDR (%) MDR (%)
FWTP in our previous work; however, the noises of T2 and SPE
T2 SPE T2 SPE statistics lead to relatively high rate of false detections and missed
detections. In this paper, wavelet denoise is used to deal with this
Normal Classical PCA 1.4 5.2 problem. Specically, the WD is combined with PCA to form a new
SWPCA 0.5 3.5
PCA-WD 0 0
PCA-WD algorithm. The performance of PCA-WD is sensitive to its
Bias fault Classical PCA 1.33 11.67 0.25 2.5 parameters; and the parameter selection of this compound algo-
SWPCA 0.5 3.5 0.75 17.25 rithm is difcult. This paper formulates the parameter selection
PCA-WD 0.33 0 0 0.5 PCA-WD as an optimization problem and employs PSO to deal
Drift fault Classical PCA 1.5 4.33 0 0.5
with its nonlinearity and complexity. A FWTP from a coal-red
SWPCA 0.5 2.67 0 69
PCA-WD 0.33 0 0 0 power plant is taken as a study case. The real operation data of the
Broken line Classical PCA 1.11 4.9 0 0 FWTP is collected to verify the PCA-WD algorithm. The result
SWPCA 0.29 3.14 0 0 shows that WD is effective to restrain the noises of T2 and SPE
PCA-WD 0 1.6 0 0 statistics so as to improve the performance of PCA-WD algorithm.
And the parameter optimization can obtain the optimal para-
meters of PCA-WD in an automatic way; and thus relive the de-
6.3. Study Case 3: drift fault pendence on individual's experience. The comparative studies
between classical PCA, SWPCA and optimized PCA-WD algorithms,
Thirdly, a drift fault is added to S2 from 501 to 800 to form a data in terms of four kinds of faults, are nally carried out. The opti-
set for comparative study, whose amplitude varies linearly with time. mized PCA-WD excels its opponent under all the conditions. The
The data set is then respectively applied to classical PCA, SWPCA and results further convince the advantages of the newly proposed
optimized PCA-WD respectively. The results are shown in Fig. 10. PCA-WD algorithm. However, this paper mainly focuses on the
Again, the classical PCA, SWPCA cause false detections and missed application of PCA-WD algorithm and does not present the theo-
detections under faultless and faulty conditions; comparatively, the retical analysis concerning the denoising of the PCA statistics. In
optimized PCA-WD is capable of dealing with the drift fault. our future work, we plan to establish a solid base for our PCA-WD
algorithm with strict theoretical proof.
6.4. Study Case 4: broken line fault

Finally, a broken line fault is added to S9 from 501 to 800 to test
the three algorithms. The broken line fault is simulated by setting
the value of S9 to zero during the faulty period. The results are
shown in Fig. 11. It can be seen that the optimized PCA-WD is
much better than classical PCA and SWPCA under this condition.
With a careful analysis, we nd that even the optimized PCA-WD
brings relatively high FDR, specically, its SPE FDR reaches 1.6%.
Fortunately, the MDRs of T2 and SPE statistics keep zero too; they
are actually the key indexes of the reliability of the optimized PCA-
WD algorithm. The reason is that broken line fault causes strong
signal jumps to the corresponding sensor, which in fact decreases
the performance of the objected fault detection algorithms with-
out exception of the optimized PCA-WD.
Furthermore, the performance criteria of the three algorithms
with the four cases are listed in Table 8 for mathematical com-
parison purpose. When applied to the FWTP of a coal-red power
plant, the optimized PCA-WD performs much better than classical
PCA and SWPCA, under the conditions with above four typical
faults. Under normal condition, the optimized PCA-WD works well
without any false detection and missed detection. In terms of the
conditions with the bias fault and drift fault, the optimized PCA-
WD brings false detection too; but its FDRs are acceptable and
much lower than classical PCA and SWPCA. Under the conditions
with broken line fault, the performance of optimized PCA-WD is
decreased by the strong signal jumps. Specically, the false de-
tections and missed detections are always happened along with
the samples where the signal changes present. In practice, the
signals of the feed water treatment process do not uctuate vio-
lently, unlike what happened in the above simulation studies.
Somehow, it will improve the performance of the optimized PCA-
WD algorithm, and makes the newly proposed algorithm applic-
able in eld application.
7. Conclusion
Feed water treatment process is a vital sub-process of an utility
Acknowledgment
This project is supported by National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (Grant No. 51475337) and International Science &
Technology Cooperation Program of China (Grant No.
2015DFG72440), and is partially supported by the Open Research
Fund of Key Laboratory of Transients in Hydraulic Machinery,
Ministry of Education.
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