Abstract
Operational indices optimization is crucial for the global optimization in beneficiation processes. This paper presents a multi-tasking multi-objective evolutionary method to solve operational indices optimization, which involves a formulated multi-objective multifactorial operational indices optimization problem (MO-MFO) and a proposed multi-objective multifactorial optimization algorithm for solving the established MO-MFO problem. The MO-MFO problem includes multiple level of accurate models of operational indices optimization, which are generated on the basis of a dataset collected from production. Among the formulated models, the most accurate one is considered to be the original functions of the solved problem, while the remained models are the helper tasks to accelerate the optimization of the most accurate model. For the multifactorial optimization algorithm, the assistant models are alternatively in multi-tasking environment with the accurate model to transfer their knowledge to the accurate model during optimization in order to enhance the convergence of the accurate model. Meanwhile, the recently proposed two-stage assortative mating strategy for a multi-objective multifactorial optimization algorithm is applied to transfer knowledge among multi-tasking tasks. The proposed multi-tasking framework for operational indices optimization has conducted on 10 different production Conditions of beneficiation. Simulation results demonstrate its effectiveness in addressing the operational indices optimization of beneficiation problem.