Of all the things that could be added to the Internet of Things, grain silos may not be the first that come to mind. But, in fact, grain-management systems have been employing temperature and humidity sensors to monitor the condition of grain stored in silos for decades. Now, the industry is evolving, as data collected from those sensor networks is brought onto cloud-based platforms.
In October 2013, Mississippi-based grain-management technology provider TempuTech became a beta tester for General Electric’s Equipment Insight platform, a then-new offering that provides original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with a path for pulling data from legacy industrial systems into a cloud-based format, complete with data-analysis modules and other tools aimed at improving asset utilization and maintenance and repair operations. At present, TempuTech has converted or is in the process of converting roughly 30 of its customers to the Equipment Insights platform, which it installs at all of its new customer sites (five new customers are currently coming online, according to Adrian Merrill, TempuTech’s VP), as well as at the sites of any customers that are receiving software upgrades. For these customers, TempuTech can convey actionable information regarding the grain’s condition more quickly and easily than before.
“There are two sides to our business,” Merrill explains. “There’s the grain management, where we monitor the temperature and moisture of grain stored inside bins. And then there’s the hazard monitoring, where we monitor the bearings, the motion of belts and the buckets that transport the grain into and out of the bins.”
Environmental Monitoring
Tracking the moisture and humidity levels inside the bins is crucial to preventing pest infestations, seed germination or other factors that could reduce the grain’s quality and, therefore, its selling price. Sensors—which are often wired into cables that snake around the bin interiors, but are in some cases wireless—transmit data to software that controls large aeration fans located beneah the bins.
The TempuTech software uses presets to make managing the environment within the grain bin straightforward for its customers. “We have a formula for each type of grain that is written into the PLC,” Merrill explains, adding that the PLC (programmable logic controller) serves as the interface between the management software and the fans and sensors. In the software, he says, “the farmer or plant operator goes to a settings screen for each bin and selects the grain type from a drop-down list and the desired moisture content.”
The software then runs a formula that factors in the temperature and humidity inside the bin, as well as the ambient temperature and humidity levels from nearby weather stations, and determines how to achieve and maintain a user’s desired temperature and moisture levels. Based on this information, the software ascertains whether large fans mounted under the bins should be turned on, and whether cool air is needed to increase the moisture or dry air to decrease it. It’s all about “targeting the desired moisture they program into the setting screens,” Merrill says.
Some customers also add carbon dioxide sensors to the bins in order to track gases generated by bug activity and spoilage, Merrill adds, and the TempuTech software generates reports from these sensors as well.
Hazard Duty
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that grain silos be outfitted with a hazard-monitoring system that alerts operators if the conveyors that move grain into and out of bins slow by 10 percent or more, and the solution must also automatically shut off the conveyors if they slow by as much as 80 percent. This is because reduced speed is often indicative of a jam on the belt, which can create high amounts of heat or a spark—a highly hazardous event inside of a grain bin, since dust in the air could trigger an explosion in the presence of a spark.
Going beyond these OSHA minimum requirements, Merrill says, TempuTech also uses a motion sensor on the conveyors that feed into the conveyor belts inside the bin. If these feeder belts slow down by as much as 10 percent, the TempuTech software automatically shuts them down, because if these feeders are slowing due to a problem with an interior conveyor within the bin, the grain on the feeder could begin backing up, thereby causing a headache for bin operators.
The Conversion
Prior to the customer’s adoption of the Equipment Insight platform, the grain-management software and the hazard software operated independently of each other on a PC connected to the sensing equipment, via the PLC, at the customer site. But the customer lacked the means to access both systems in an easy-to-use single interface, Merrill says, which the Equipment Insight interface provides.
Previously, the TempuTech software would run periodic daily scans of both the grain- and hazard-monitoring systems. The facility operator would need to log into the software and read the reports, and then (if the report showed a problem that needed to be addressed) manually e-mail these reports to the grain bin managers.
Using General Electric’s Proficy software on the cloud-based Equipment Insight platform, TempuTech and GE worked together to create a human-machine interface that combines the two systems, generating alerts and notices from both solutions into a single messaging system.
Now, the TempuTech system automatically loads the reports to the Equipment Insight Cloud, which sends real-time alarms and alerts to the managers via their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, and through their desktop PCs.
Merrill says the conversion process was not a simple or overnight endeavor. “We worked with GE to integrate the back-end equipment [into the Equipment Insight platform], and that was pretty simple,” he states. “But bringing the grain and hazard together was a bit harder on the PLC software side. It was a lot of work, but we did benefit from being one of the first companies to use GE’s Equipment Insight because GE provided a lot of resources to us, since it really wanted to make us successful.”