| Summary: | This paper proposes a control framework for in-silo drying of cereal grains. The research contributes to the digitization of grain storage processes by using available data, sensor networks and control systems specially designed to maintain the quality of grains stored long-term in silos. A systemic control engineering approach is considered. Firstly, the in-silo grain drying process was modeled based on first principles and spatial sampling of spatial-temporal grain moisture evolution has been done. This results in a simplified, low-order, finite-dimensional system which describes moisture extraction in typical state-space form. This model which simulated the interaction between intergranular air and grain kernels within the in-silo grain drying process has been validated in MATLAB ®/Simulink®. Further, a two-loops cascaded control structure, which uses classical two time scale method for dynamics decoupling between intergranular air humidity and grain moisture content values, has been proposed. Classical control design approaches, such as state feedback, integral control and pole placement, have been used to tune the associated controllers. Performance of the proposed control law has been checked via numerical simulation. This closed-loop control framework paves the way towards optimal control of in-silo drying process.
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