A Control-parameter Data Collecting and Processing System of Grain Drying

in a Deep Fixed-Bed

Danyang Wang1, Chenghua Li 2,* , Jiangning Xu3, Benhua Zhang1, Yuanjuan Gong1
1. College of Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang 110161, China
2. College of Mechanical Engineering, Shenyang Ligong University, Shenyang 110161, China
3. College of Information and Electrical Engineering, Shenyang Agricultural University,
Shenyang, 110161, China
*
Email : lch@syau.edu.cn,lch@mail.sylu.edu.cn

Abstract automatically by applying the function modules of

Accurate data acquisition and processing is important
to analyze the experimental results and research the
theories of grain drying. Experiments of grain drying
in a deep fixed-bed usually have characteristics of long
period, difficult dynamic signal acquisition, large
amount of experimental data and cockamamie data
processing, etc. Aiming at the disadvantages of
tiresome procedure, low efficiency and big error which
exist in the traditional manual record and data
processing mode for test process, an automatic multi-
parameters collecting and processing system for the
experiments of grain drying in a deep fixed-bed is
developed. The system mainly consists of two parts:
testing software of master computer, hardware and
software of slave computer. A microcontroller is used
as the central control unit of the slave computer. Both
design of the hardware interface circuit and the data
acquisition program have been accomplished. Analog
signals of sensors are collected and sent to the master
computer by serial communication mode. Software of
data processing and analysis used for the master
computer operation is developed by using software
development tool Excel and VBA on the base of
software engineering method, theories of grain drying
and experimental design method. The software can
automatically analyze and process the regulate control
parameters of drying air temperature ˈ drying air
velocity, humidity, paddy thickness and intermittent
drying time, which were all collected and sent by the
slave computer system ,and then it can give regression
equations and graphics of influence laws of each
regulate control parameter on paddy rice dried-
quality(additional crack percentage, drying
homogeneous degree and drying time, etc.)
regression analysis, principal component analysis
(PCA) and parameterization drawing, etc. A series of
paddy drying experiments including single-factor
experiments and quadratic orthogonal rotary
combination experiments in a deep fixed-bed were
conducted with the developed system. The results
showed that the system works stably and reliably by
compared with the traditional manual record, while
labor intensity and interference on data processing of
manual operation cloud be decreased during the
drying experimental study, and data analysis precision
and reliability of experiments also be improved.
Keywords: Grain drying; Data acquisition and processing
system; Serial communication; Regression analysis
1. Introduction
China is a big agricultural country with annual
average grain yield of 4.5×1011 Kg, however the
overall level of its equipment technology for grain
drying is very relatively low. Large-sized grain drying
center with regional features has not formed and the
integrated ratio of mechanically drying is less than 3%
by now. Moreover, the annual grain post-harvest loss
caused by incapability of timely drying is about
5×109Kg, so the continuous technical improvement and
enhancement for grain drying equipment has become
an exigent request of agricultural economy
development (Wang Danyang et al., 2008).
Compared with others grain drying methods, hot air
dying which has the merits of higher heat efficiency,
energy saving and lower cost, has been widely applied
in practical production (Wang Danyang. 2005). For
general drying equipmentˈdrying air temperature,

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humility and air velocity and other parameters
respectively at drying chamber inlet and outlet all have
an important effect on drying efficiency and
quality(Zheng Xianzhe et al., 2001; Zhang Yonglin et
al., 2007). Therefore, the research on the influence
laws of each factor on drying efficiency and quality is
so particularly important that it will be reasonable to
control these parameters in practical production (Chen
Jianping et al., 2009; Chen Kunjie et al., 2001; Wang
Feng et al., 2008). As grain drying is a process of
unsteady heat and mass transfer, all correlated
parameter-values of each state point change greatly
during the drying process, which has put forward
higher demand to the method for parameter monitoring
and controlling. The traditional method for parameter
monitoring and controlling is manual record and
artificial process, the method of which has some
shortcomings, including low precision, low safety, low
efficiency, tiresome procedure, and big error etc. while
computer software and hardware technique of high
speed development provide a doable method for
automatic monitoring of experimental parameters ,and
for experimental data automatic collection, display and
automatic saving (Chen Yuanyuan et al., 2008; Fu Yu
et al., 2006; Li Changyou et al., 2002). In this work, a
system with double host of master computer and slave
computer was adopted to realize the automatic
collection and process of each important working
parameter during the drying process, and combined
with specific paddy drying experiments on a deep
fixed-bed; the system reliability and its function will be
wholly verified.
2. Hot air drying system and control
parameter
Drying experiments were conducted using a hot air
drying type system. The system basically consists of air
compressor, rotameter, heater, drying chamber and
MCU system, the structure of it as shown in fig.1. The
airflow with stable pressure which was afford by the air
compressor flows through the control valve and the
rotameter, and then it is transported to the drying
chamber to dry the inside-materials after it is heated by
the heater. Some test holes in the drying chamber are
used for measuring temperature, humidity and other
parameter values of each grain layer. In each drying
experiment, moisture contents of each test point in each
grain-layer will be obtained through weight
measurement of each test point by a special sampler
every certain interval until all the moisture contents of
test points come up to the safe storage standard, that is
the end of drying experiment.
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The main parameters which need to be measured
and monitored by the hot air drying system working
include the following five parts:(1) drying air
temperature and humidity at drying chamber inlet and
outlet respectively, (2) drying air temperature and
humidity at each test point in every grain layer, (3)
drying air velocity at each test point in every grain
layer, (4) weight of each test point in each grain-layer,
(5) supply pressure of air compressor (Wang Danyang.
2005).
1. drying cha mbe r 2. rota ry s e pa ra te r 3. fe e d inle t 4.
s e ns ors 5. ma te ria l dis cha rge 6. e le ctronic digita l
te mpe ra ture me a s ure r 7. MCU s ys te m 8. ma s te r
compute r 9. he a te r 10. control va lve 11. e xha us t pipe
for s ta ble pre s s ure 12. a ir compre s s or 13. pre s s ure
ga uge 14. rota me te r
Figure 1. Structure of drying test bed
3. Data collecting and processing system
design for hot air drying
3.1 Hardware design for data collecting and
processing system
According to the requirement of grain drying
experiment, a data acquisition and processing system was
designed, the hardware composition as shown in fig.2.
Microprocessor is as core processing unit of the system.
As the information is not too large with the system
working, and the information processing speed required
for the system is low relatively, AT89C52 was chosen as
core microcontroller for the system based on the
comparative analysis of different microcontrollers’
performance, price and control functions. Hardware circuit
design mainly includes signal collection module and
communication module etc.
DS18B20 1-wire digital temperature sensor was
selected for the system. Its temperature measuring

Figure 2. Hardware framework of the system
range is -55 ć ~125 ć . The measuring accuracy can
reach ±0.5ć in the range -10ć~ 85ć. A/D conversion
accuracy is 9-12bit and the measurement resolution can
reach 0.0625 ć. Temperature signals was measured and
output in a mode of 16 bit digital signal extended from
symbol. Humidity signal was measured by using table-
lookup calculation method of wet and dry ball
temperature measurement, and wind speed signal was
measured based on the calculation of impeller rotational
speed measured by hall element; Connection circuit of
sensors and AT89C52 as shown in fig.3.
Figure 3. Hardware interface circuit of microcontroller
and sensors (U5 is hall element)
Communication between AT89C52 microcontroller
and PC is realized by the RXD pin (P3.0, the receiver
for serial data) and the TXD pin (P3.1, the sender for
serial data transmitter). AT89C52 microcontroller can
send and receive data at the same time because it has
two SBUF buffers which can send and receive data
independently and physically. However as the signal at
the serial communication interface of microcontroller is
TTL level (0~5V), while the signal at the serial
communication interface of master computer is RS-
232C level (-12~12V), so level conversion is necessary
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for communication before the related
connection.MAX232 of RS-232 was selected as level
conversion chip for the system, the connection circuit
of level conversion as shown in fig.4.
Figure 4. Connection circuit of level conversion
OCMJ4×12B which is a LCD Display module of
lattice with 18 pins was selected for LCD Display. And
it can shows four lines each with twelve Chinese
characters or characters. The connection circuit of
OCMJ4×12B and AT89C52 as shown in fig.5.
Figure 5. Connection circuit of OCMJ4×12B and
AT89C52
3.2. Software design for data collecting and
processing system
3.2.1. Software design for signal acquisition and
signal sending of slave computer. The software of
slave computer is written in C language, the main
submodules of which include as followings: (1) data
collection module used in Parameters real-time
measurement of materials being dried ˈ (2) Data
processing module used in filtering the data collected
by sensors to obtain accurate dataˈ(3) communication
module used in timed sending the data collected and
receiving the parameters from PC in interrupt mode.
The MCU control system composed of main program,
timed interrupt service routine, receiving interrupt
service routine and the three sub modules mentioned
above. Microcomputer, timer, interrupt and initialization
of serial communication were concerned firstly in the
main program. By the Program executing, the system is
initialized firstly and then comes into a circulatory state.
The main program flow as shown in fig.6. Data
collection and display of drying air temperature,
humidity and velocity respectively are all completed
based on the interrupt program, and the program flow of
temperature data acquisition as shown in fig.7.
Figure 6. Startup flow of main program
Figure 7. Program flow of temperature data acquisition
module
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3.2.2. Software design for data acquisition and data
processing of master computer. The hardware of data
acquisition and processing system for the drying test
bed was composed of PC and AT89C52 (slave
computer), and software was developed with Excel and
VBA on the Windows operation platform. RS-232 data
communication line was used to realize the
communication between the master computer and the
slave computer, by which all the parameters collected
real-timely by the slave computer could be sent to the
master computer. For the data processing software of
the master computer, Serial communication is realized
based on the MS Comm communication control
provided by visual basic 6.0. The data acquisition
software adopts event-driven data communication
mode and a timer to open timed communication ports,
then the data uploaded from the slave computer could
be received and transmission errors of communication
could be captured. Then data uploaded from the slave
computer can be checked based on serial
communication protocol, and from which each related
parameter will be extracted. The final functions mainly
include as followings:(1) Dynamic display of data
collected,(2) Pretreatment of experimental data (such
as error control of data), (3) Calculation of original
data according to experiment requirement, (4) special
program for diagram drawing according to the
calculation results, (5) index analysis for single factor
experiments and regression analysis for multifactor
experiments.
Automatic, fast and accurate processing of
experiment data can be realized based on the software
platform, which provide technical support for the
research of grain drying. The operation interface of the
system developed as shown in fig.8.
Figure 8. Main operation menu of the system
4. Experiments and result analysis
Experiments of paddy drying in the deep fixed-bed
were conducted by using the system developedˈand
functions and reliability of the system were validated in
fieldwork. According to the requirement of technology
development for paddy rice drying, drying air velocity,
drying air temperature and paddy thickness were
selected as factors, while additional crack percentage,
drying homogeneous degreeˈtotal average drying rate
and drying time were selected as experiment indexes.
The experiment process was described in details by
Wang et al. (2005). Besides 25 single factor
experiments, orthogonal rotary experimental design
method was used in multifactor experiment, and then
the total number of the experiment is 48.
In order to improve the experimental precision and
make the experimental results analysis more deeply and
conveniently, all the signal data of each experiment must
be processed as following four aspects: (1) calculation on
the transforming of real-time weight of each test point in
every grain-layer for real-time moisture content(d.b) and
average drying rate.(2)drawing based on the real-time
temperature data of each test point (3) drawing based on
the real-time drying air velocity data at each test point (4)
According to the results of quadratic orthogonal
experiment, the optimal technological condition was
determined with regression analysis and variance analysis
method. Draw relevant analysis chart was drawn and
principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted. Thus
there were 5175 times numerical calculation on
transforming, and 690 graph drawings needed. All of this
is a very heavy work, while the soft system developed
makes it easy. Analysis result chart (partly shown) of a
single drying index which was generated by the system as
shown in fig.9.

Figure 9. Curve automatic generated by the system
(partly)
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Application results of the data collecting and
processing system developed for hot air drying show
that the system works stably and reliably, and data from
different sensors could be collected and uploaded real-
timely according to the requirement of experiment, so
labor intensity and interference on data processing of
manual operation cloud be decreased during the drying
experimental study. Furthermore, coherence and
stability of experiment process are effectively
guaranteed, drying efficiency is improved. Manual
method for data processing and the software developed
for data processing were both used to process and
analysis the original experiment data collected
separately. By comparative analysis with the two
methods based on the same group experiment data, it is
clear that the time consumption of the manual
calculation and graphics processing (in a skilled case)
at least needs 2 minutes and 20 minutes respectively, so
the whole time of manual method for data processing
based on all the 48 experiments at least need about
22×48=1056 minutes, which is furthermore added to
the time for drawing and regression analysis based on
each drying index, at least 2.5 working days must be
needed for the work. Moreover, influence of manual
operation on processing results was hard to be
excluded in lots of duplicate work. On the contrary, by
using the data collecting and processing system
developed the time consumption for single factor
experiment only needs 75 seconds, for Multi-factor
experiment only needs 240 seconds. Reliability and
productivity of data processing in the test bed have
both improved; moreover, the system provides a
powerful tool for research on materials drying law.
5. Conclusions
In accordance with the backward situation of
automatic measurement and control of grain drying
equipment in our country, the purpose of this study was
to improve the drying parameters acquisition precision
and operation environment of grain drying processing.
The control-parameter acquisition and processing
system developed for the grain drying test-bed was
designed and verified based on the single factor
experiment and multifactor experiment of paddy drying
on a deep fixed test bed. The results indicated that the
control-parameter acquisition and processing system
developed for the grain drying test-bed could achieve
all the designed functions and achieve the desired
application results, but further improvement on the
accuracy and real-time of grain moisture content
measurement is needed. Overall, the data collecting
and processing system designed has a good application
value and guiding significance for grain drying
procedure.

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