Development of sago drying with environmentally friendly techniques
Abstract One of the drying machines that is commonly used by in industry is a rack-type dryer. However, the rack-type drying machine has generally fairly low efficiency. A rack-type dryer has been designed which was equipped with a hybrid mechanism, but is its performance not yet known when it is controlled by an expert control system. The purpose of this research was to produce an expert control system that can be applied to a rack-type dryer with a hybrid system mechanism which can improve the performance of the dryer. The research includes the development of expert rules applied to the control system and a series of tests was carried out using 10 kg of fresh sago starch. The test results show that the drying air temperature did not show any overshoot and short settling time, drying temperature is relatively stable and there was no steady state error. The drying rate of fresh sago starch can be increased by using the hybrid system. The use of electric power with the hybrid system was lower (5.78 kWh) compared to that of non-hybrid (6.88 kWh) or a reduction of about 16% compared to the non-hybrid system. Thermal efficiency of the rack-type dryer with the expert control system was about 36%.
