Coal pulverizer prognostics data challenge in PHMAP 2017 and suggestions for future studies

Pulverizers in a power plant are used to grind coal into the form of a fine powder for combustion in a power plant. To secure reliable operation, redundant pulverizers should be installed in power plants and monitored. Pulverizers can be operated and maintained in a cost-effective manner by correctly estimating the current health condition and remaining useful life of the pulverizer’s gearbox system. To this end, the Data Challenge Committee of the PHM Asian Pacific 2017 (PHMAP 2017) conference organized an open competition on the topic of coal pulverizer health estimation based on a real working power station. This paper presents the original problem and given facts, as well as the list of winners of the Data Challenge Competition. We anticipate that this paper can be used as a reference in the development of a prognostic method that can accurately predict the health conditions of coal pulverizers.