Automatic, In-bin Grain Drying Using Model Predictive Control

In-bin grain drying is a perfect tool to deal with unexpected weather on farms all over the world. The downfall of the method is that it takes a lot of personal experience and can be difficult for farmers to devote the attention needed in order to catch the best conditions for drying. This paper proposes an automatic way to control in-bin grain drying in order to reduce the manual monitoring demanded by farmers. The use of model predictive control is tested on the first layer of the drying bin to assess the practicality and performance. Using simulated results from complex equations as the real world system, an approximated model is used to design a controller which yielded great results in driving the moisture content to the reference.