Data analytics for performance evaluation under uncertainties applied to an industrial refrigeration plant

Artificial intelligence has bounced into industrial applications contributing several advantages to the field and have led to the possibility to open new ways to solve many actual problems. In this paper, a data-driven performance evaluation methodology is presented and applied to an industrial refrigeration system. The strategy takes advantage of the Multivariate Kernel Density Estimation technique and Self-Organizing Maps to develop a robust method, which is able to determine a near-optimal performance map, taking into account the system uncertainties and the multiple signals involved in the process. A normality model is used to detect and filter non-representative operating samples to subsequently develop a reliable performance map. The performance map allows comparing the plant assessment under the same operating conditions and permits to identify the potential system improvement capabilities. To ensure that the resulting evaluation is trustworthy, a robustness strategy is developed to identify either possible new operation conditions or abnormal situations in order to avoid uncertain assessments. Furthermore, the proposed approach is tested with real industrial plant data to validate the suitability of the method.