In my last blog, I listed all the different fan control strategies. From the very simple ,(on at night — off during the day), to the ultimate controller that required moisture cables. But how much different are they? Is the extra complexity and moisture cables worth it?
I think we all can agree that the water balance (water in/out) is the most accurate means of measuring whether of not we are drying or wetting, and by how much. And sure it is great for turning the fan off, but it totally lacks in figuring out when to turn the fan on.
OK let’s compare control methods. If we only want to control for ‘drying’ i.e. turn the fan on only when we have drying conditions, then we can easily use the water balance as a basis. But let’s have another look at this; with water balance we are calculating the absolute humidity of the water going into the bin and the absolute humidity of the water coming out. How different is that from our EMC method in which we input the MC and grain T to get a RH that can easily be converted to an absolute humidity. In other words grain sitting in a bin will try to produce a specific RH with a given MC and T. And with T and RH we can easily calculate the absolute humidity. Now if the outside air has an absolute humidity that is less than the air in the bin’s absolute humidity we will get drying.
Let’s go through this again. The fan is off and has been off for some time, at least an hour. Therefore we can use EMC — everything must be in equilibrium. So we plug the grain T and MC into the appropriate EMC equation and get an RH. From this RH and grain T we calculate the absolute humidity — the number of grams of water in one cubic meter. Or perhaps we have a moisture cable and have the RH of the air directly. Either way we end up with the absolute humidity. And if this absolute humidity is greater than the absolute humidity of the outside air then we have a drying condition and a means to turn the fan on. Now this works out really well, because to use this the fan must be off, and for some time for things to equalize. Once the fan is on, we start using the water balance criteria of more water coming out than going in to make a decision to turn the fan off. This works out really neat: the EMC technique does not work in flowing air, but is great for no flow; whereas the water balance does not work in no flow conditions but is great for flowing. Therefore use EMC to turn the fan on, and water balance to turn it off. The two techniques complement each other and are actually using the same thing as a decision criteria — the absolute humidity of the air inside and outside the bin. There is no point in suggesting that one is better than the other, they in essence are the same.
The method in which we use temp difference is another story. With temp difference, we only turn the fan on if the grain temp > outside air temp. We know that the MC of the grain and the RH of the outside air are not used in this. I did a correlation with the temp diff and water balance on some data we did where the fan ran continuously. The R^2 value was 0.64 but what does that really mean? How much better would this temp diff technique be if we did include the RH in some fashion. Surely the RH does have some effect? If it is raining outside with an RH of 100%, one in inclined to think we will not be drying? I don’t care if the temp of the air is less than that of the grain.?? Can we look into this a bit more?
Here is what I did. I took some old data from master_2015B file, sheet 08 09W which means it was from 2008, bin 9, wheat. The run was for 288 hours with the fan running continuously. I did the water balance calculation for each hour and determined how much drying occurred for each hour. I then applied the temp difference calculation ( assume drying ~ grain Temp – air Temp) As stated previously I did a correlation with what I consider to be the correct drying, the water balance, and got 0.64. I also saw that if I used Tdiff as the control strategy there would be 12 hours out of the 288 in which Tdiff would wet the grain. And if you qualify it with only turning the fan on when RH < 80%, then we are reduced to 6 hours of wetting. If we further qualify Tdiff with an offset of 2. Tg-Tair>2 or Tair + 2 < Tgrain, then we only have one hour of slight wetting (this includes RH<80%).
To summarize we got wetting:
1/288 offset of 2 RHair < 80%
6/288 offset 0 RHair < 80%
12/288 offset 0 RHair < 100%
If we used the Tdiff control with offset of 2 and RH < 80% we essentially won’t get any wetting, BUT we will miss out on some drying opportunities. There are 29 hours in which Tdiff would have turned the fans off when indeed there was some drying and possibly a little warming of the grain.
We are starting to nit-pick here a bit. The Tdiff is so simple, easy to understand, easy to implement with no heavy duty calculations, and no need for MC or moisture cables. Tdiff will take a little bit longer to get the grain dry, but it will just as cold and safe. For simplicity we are giving up some drying opportunities. What do we want? Perfection or Simplicity?
I personally would like to go with the moisture cables and have the whole process automated with the ultimate controller; but I can certainly understand and appreciate those that would lean toward the simpler system — they have temperature cables and don’t want to purchase moisture cables — no problem, we still have something for you that works well.