Controllers design for the semi-automation shrimps tempura frying production line

Abstract

Nowadays, the applications of automatic control systems have been developing very fast in many diversify of the industry fields. One of the most significant industry that is needed to care and focus to develop this automation technology in order to reduce the huge number of workers and increase the productivity is the seafood industries. Normally, the seafood industry has a lot of workers to carry out everything manually. There still remain many research topics relating to this field to help this industry to develop in the trend of 4.0 ages. The semi–automation shrimps Tempura frying production line is a system to make Tempura shrimps with high productivity. The workers simply put the shrimps into the serial of chain frying molds and the system will automatically do the whole production process to produce the completed Tempura shrimps. The whole process to produce Tempura shrimps includes the following steps: (1) Shaping shrimp and cover with powder solution by automatic powder solution spraying system; (2) Complete frying to make the shrimps to be cooked; (3) Oil draining system to remove the remain oil inside the shrimp and the powder cover. Then the finished products will be put into the frozen system to preserve. The whole production line will be separated into 3 main modules: Module 1: The shaping module (first time frying) and powder solution spraying module; Module 2: The deep fry module (second time frying); Module 3: The oil draining module. This paper introduces about the control system for each module and the controller of the whole system to make a complete semi-automation shrimp tempura frying production line. Some controller technology as On/Off, PID control algorithms are proposed to apply for the whole production line as: speed control of the stainless-steel chain conveyors, temperature control of the cooked tanks, quantitative control of the powder solution amount to be sprayed on the shrimps, the oil draining conveyor speed, the heat and air flow control of the oil draining module.