Studies of relationships between Free Swelling Index (FSI) and coal quality by regression and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System

The results of proximate, ultimate, and petrographic analysis for a wide range of Kentucky coal samples were used to predict Free Swelling Index (FSI) using multivariable regression and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). Three different input sets: (a) moisture, ash, and volatile matter; (b) carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, and mineral matter; and (c) group-maceral analysis, mineral matter, moisture, sulfur, and R_max were applied for both methods. Non-linear regression achieved the correlation coefficients (R²) of 0.38, 0.49, and 0.70 for input sets (a), (b), and (c), respectively. By using the same input sets, ANFIS predicted FSI with higher R² of 0.46, 0.82 and 0.95, respectively. Results show that input set (c) is the best predictor of FSI in both prediction methods, and ANFIS significantly can be used to predict FSI when regression results do not have appropriate accuracy.