SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR LEAST SQUARES FILTERING BASED LEAK FLOW ESTIMATION/DETECTION USING EXPONENTIALLY SHAPED LEAK PROFILES

A method and system for detecting and estimating leaks in an industrial boiler whereby the method and system formulate the leak detection problem as a least squares fitting problem, where one or more of the fitted parameters estimate leak flows. The method and system create a representation that incorporates a leak model component, a process model component and a noise model component into the representation. This invention provides a variety of leak dotproduct.sub.ij (tCurrent)=exp(-(tCurrent-tPrevious)/Tau.sub.ij)* dotproduct.sub.ij (tPrevious)+(1-exp(-min(t/Current-tPrevious, maxDt)/ Tau.sub.ij))*x.sub.i (tCurrent)*x.sub.j (tCurrent).