Digital twin key technology on rare earth process

Digital twin can be defined as a digital equivalent of an object of which it can mirror its behavior and status or virtual replicas of real physical entities in Cyberspace. To an extent, it also can simulate and predict the states of equipment or systems through smart algorithms and massive data. Hence, the digital twin is emerging used in intelligent manufacturing Systems in real-time and predicting system failure and also has introduced into a variety of traditional industries such as construction, Agriculture. Rare earth production is a typical process industry, and its Extraction Process enjoys the top priority in the industry. However, the extraction process is usually characterized by nonlinear behavior, large time delays, and strong coupling of various process variables. In case of failures happened in the process, the whole line would be shut down. Therefore, the digital twin is introduced into the design of process simulation to promote the efficiency and intelligent level of the Extraction Process. This paper proposes the techniques to build the rare earth digital twin such as soft measurement of component content, component content process simulation, control optimization strategy, and virtual workshop, etc. At the end, the validity of the model is verified, and a case study is conducted to verify the feasibility of the whole Digital twin framework.

Automated summary

Digital twin is a digital equivalent of an object that can simulate its behavior and status, and predict system states through smart algorithms and data. It can be used in intelligent manufacturing systems, traditional industries, etc. Rare earth production, as a typical process industry, can benefit from the optimization introduced by digital twin.