Abstract
Thermal treatment processes such as roasting and drying are very energy intensive and considering the ever-increasing cost of energy, there is the need for continuous process improvement in order to reduce operational cost, while maintaining or improving the quality of the end cocoa products. This work describes the design and simulation of an automated control system (ACS) based on a PID controller algorithm for the control of the thermal treatment of cocoa beans in a conveyor belt dryer. The thermal treatment processes is modelled as a continuous, spatially distributed single input single output system (SISO), where the control variable is the temperature of the inlet drying air and the controlled variable, the product temperature in the drying chamber. Software and hardware requirement of the ACS were also presented and discuss. Numerical simulations of the ACS were carried out using Matlab and Simulink. Overall, the numerical simulation results show that the PID controller is stable and robust in terms of input disturbance rejection. The system provides relatively fast response in terms of eliminating offset and steady state error in the thermal treatment process.
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