Proc. SOAVE 2004, Ilmenau September 2004, Fortschrittberichte VDI, Reihe 10, Nr. 743, pp. 262 - 270, VDI-Verlag, Duesseldorf, 2004 Application of Action Dependent Heuristic Dynamic Programming to Control an Industrial Waste Incineration Plant ∗ V.Stephan and F. Wintrich Powitec Intelligent Technologies GmbH Am Teelbruch 134b, 45129 Essen-Kettwig, volker.stephan@powitec.de A. K¨ onig and K. Debes Technische Universit¨ at Ilmenau, Fachgebiet Neuroinformatik 98684 Ilmenau, PF 100565, klaus.debes@tu-ilmenau.de Abstract In this paper, we describe our application of a neurocontroller based on Action Dependent Heuristic Dynamic Programming (ADHDP) to optimize the combustion-process for an industrial hazardous waste incineration plant. This ADHDP-controller originally was designed for online learning. That implies, that this controller starts with a randomly initialized policy and improves its performance while interacting with the process. This learning scheme could not be used in our case, since the plant operators would not allow long training periods with inevitable poor performance. We describe, how this problem can be solved by a modified training procedure for the action network. Finally, we present first and promising results for the optimization of action net output in order to improve the waste incineration process with respect to the targets defined by the plant operator. 1 Introduction The AVG Abfall-Verwertungs-Gesellschaft mbH in Hamburg (Germany) is one of the largest compa- nies in Germany for disposal of hazardous waste. Every year about 100000 tons of solid, pasty, liquid and waste packed in containers are treated. The incineration at temperatures higher that 1100 ◦ C is a very safe and effective technique to dispose that waste, since it reduces the quantity and also destroys harmful substances. The center of the incineration plant is a rotary kiln with a length of 12m and a diameter of 5.4m. Solid wastes are brought into the kiln via a falling shaft (see figure 1, part 1), liquid and slurry type wastes are pumped via lances and burners, and drums are brought into the kiln via special lifts. By slowly rotating the kiln (figure 1, part 2), the transport and complete combustion of the waste material is ensured. In the secondary combustion chamber (figure 1, part 3), exhaust fumes are after-burnt at temperatures higher than 1100 ◦ C to destroy organic compounds like dioxins or furans. Afterwards, the hot flue gas is used to generate steam, which is fed to a local district heating network. 2 The Control Problem Additionally to the continuously incoming liquid and pasty waste, from time to time also solid ma- terial from the waste pit or packages in form of barrels filled with waste are fed into the kiln. These * sponsored by AIF, Project-Nr.: KF 0363802KLF2