Abstract
This work is aimed at applying holonic control system to poultry house travelling hopper feeders with the comparative cost analysis. It adopts HCBA which is suitable for controlling the reconfigurable automated processes. The feeder consists of parts for different types of poultry feeds dispensable from the feed reservoirs and carried around by travelling hoppers along the feed carts. The simulations were carried out using MATLAB and SIMATIC software. The responses of the speed of each traveling hopper were determined to be 1.04 sec, 1.91 sec and 0.0841% for rise time, settling time and percentage overshoot respectively. The parameters of the embedded controller in STEP 7 CONT_C FB41 data block translate to a constant gain of 10, integral time constant of 100 ms and derivative time constant of 280 ms. Visual results from the HMI show the system’s ability for customization, cooperation and autonomy for implementation of any poultry feeding program. The cost analysis shows that it is profitable for farm capacity of 10,000 birds and above with low labour cost and average annual energy cost of about N708,000. The feed wastage loss is reduced by 66% while depreciation is 10% as compared to cage system with belted conveyor feeder.
Highlights
The Nigerian manufacturing sector has failed to undergo the critical structural transformation required for it to play a leading role in economic growth and development [1]
Implantation with STEP 7 and WinCC show results from Human Machine Interface (HMI) for various holons.For a test, wing A holons was injected with a 2 minutes, 2 times operations at 30 seconds interval between operations for all the three tiers of the wing A hopper A
The response of the regulated speed of the travelling hopper shows that it settles at 1.91 seconds with percentage overshoot of 0.0841%
Summary
The Nigerian manufacturing sector has failed to undergo the critical structural transformation required for it to play a leading role in economic growth and development [1]. The sector is structurally weak and basic industries such as agriculture, iron and steel are not fully operational. The sector is unable to attract the necessary investment for economic growths and remains a small player in the economy. Poultry farming remains low, characterized by poor and old equipment, ineffective feeding methods and low quality of poultry products in small quantities. In view of the above, the need to look into the current global trend in the industrial technologies and find its application to productive poultry farming is essential. Holonic systems approach provides endless possibilities of the application of technology to agriculture and to other sectors of the economy
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