The pre-combustion
chamber (PCC) is commonly used to ensure stable
combustion in boilers. However, when a coal-fired boiler uses a PCC
combustor, the cross-sectional area and volumetric heat load in the
PCC are high, which is prone to slagging, affecting the safe and stable
operation of the boiler. Therefore, developing a fast and accurate
prediction model is very important for judging the degree of slagging
on the wall of the PCC. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI)
has been widely used in the field of thermal engineering, especially
in the prediction of slagging. However, currently, using neural networks
to predict the degree of boiler slagging only inputs simple parameters
such as silicon ratio and acid–base ratio, without considering
the actual complex flow and combustion characteristics in the furnace.
In order to improve the accuracy of boiler slagging prediction, a
deep parallel residual convolution neural network (DPRCNN) is proposed
for automatically identifying three types of boiler wall slagging
degrees. First, we simulate the boiler combustion process under various
operating and structural parameters and output a dataset. Second,
experimental validation is used to numerically simulate typical operating
conditions, verifying the accuracy of the resulting dataset, and the
generated dataset is sent to the DPRCNN model for identification.
Finally, a convolutional neural network incorporating parallel thinking
is proposed to predict boiler slagging. The experimental results show
that the accuracy, accuracy, and area under curve (AUC) of DPRCNN
reach 100%, 100%, and 100%, verifying the applicability of deep learning
technology to boiler slagging prediction.