The Development of Automatic Control System to Adjust a Cycle Speed of a Bagasse Dust Conveyor System for Energy Saving

Abstract

This article presents a study to determine the efficiency of bagasse drying process and to find a wayto reduce a fuel consumption of drying process by developing an automatic control system to adjust a cyclespeed of a bagasse dust conveyor system. The automatic control system was developed and installed inconveyor system and the cycle speed was adjusted to a suitable humidity of the bagasse. Then, the bagassemoisture content and volume of bagasse dust consumption were measured, and the efficiency of drying andenergy saving were calculated. From the study, the result shows that the suitable relation between the cyclespeed of the bagasse dust conveyor (y) and the bagasse moisture content (x) was linear equations asy = 35.70x – 1005. By using this equation to control and adjust the cycle speed varying with the humidity ofthe bagasse, the total efficiency of bagasse drying was increased by 8.09 % from 45.61% to 53.70%. Thissystem can save the energy consumption about 1,589.32 MJ/h or 93.77 kg/h, which is 15.29 % of the total fuelconsumption. If the price of bagasse dust is 0.3 baht/kg and the investment cost is 60,000 bath, this systemcan save the cost of energy 202,543.2 baht/year and the payback period will be 0.3 year.