Agricultural products' storage control system

Abstract

The paper discusses the idea and the design of a remote control system for storage management of agricultural products which temperature may rise as the result of biological processes during the storage. An actual potatoes storehouse is discussed as an application for the proposed automation system. Because of existing buildings and infrastructure at the farm, wireless data transfer system has been proposed for communication between sensors, data acquisition module (Storehouse Local Controller) and human-machine interface (HMI) module. Special rod-like temperature and humidity sensors have been designed and built to measure the temperature and humidity inside the potatoes stack at the storehouse. A complete system allows to monitor the storage process and control it on the run maintaining the desired temperature of the stored products. The study is an elaboration of previously proposed control system, including ventilation system working algorithm, further analysis of working range of the wireless data transfer modules and agricultural products temperature changes characteristics. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.