An intelligent system to identify coal maceral groups using markov-fuzzy clustering approach

Abstract

Coal is the mixture of organic matters, called as macerals, and inorganic matters. Macerals are categorized into three major groups, i.e., vitrinite, inertinite, and liptinite. The maceral group identification serves an important role in coking and non-coking coal processes that are used mainly in steel and iron industries. Hence, it becomes important to efficiently characterize these maceral groups. Currently, industries use the optical polarized microscope to distinguish the maceral groups. However, the microscopical analysis is a manual method which is time-consuming and provides subjective outcome due to human interference. Therefore, an automated approach that can identify the maceral groups accurately in less processing time is strongly needed in industries. Computer-based image analysis methods are revolutionizing the industries because of its accuracy and efficacy. In this study, an intelligent maceral group identification system is proposed using markov-fuzzy clustering approach. This approach is an integration of fuzzy sets and the markov random field, which is employed towards maceral group identification in a clustering framework. The proposed model shows better results when compared with the standard cluster-based segmentation techniques. The results from the suggested model have also been validated against the outcome of manual methods, and the feasibility is tested using performance metrics.