Modelling nitrogen oxide emission trends from the municipal solid waste incineration process using an adaptive bi-directional long and short-term memory network

Accurately predicting trends in NOx emission is essential for effectively controlling pollution in municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) power plants. However, the MSWI process exhibits notable dynamic nonlinearity, time series characteristics, and fluctuations that are distinct from those present in fossil fuel combustion processes. Therefore, the model must possess excellent capabilities in handling time series and nonlinear features while achieving adaptive updates to account for complex working conditions. To address these issues, we have developed a robust prediction model for NOx emission trends using the bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) deep learning algorithm. This model encompasses maximum information coefficient and expert experience for input variables selection, parameter optimization using the linear inertial weight particle swarm algorithm (LDWPSO), and an adaptive update strategy based on probabilistic statistics. The prediction performance of this model was compared to that of the traditional and widely used backpropagation neural network (BPNN), extreme learning machine (ELM), and LSTM. Furthermore, we verified the adaptive update effect of the proposed model using additional data. The results demonstrate that the proposed model exhibits robust prediction and adaptive capabilities. This study's originality is presenting a satisfactory trend prediction for NOx emission from the MSWI process using an adaptive LDWPSO-(Bi-LSTM) model. It will be essential for the optimization and control of NOx emissions from the MSWI process.