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Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436

2012 International Conference on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering

Design on the Precise Regulating Control System for

Moisture and Nutrient of Plants Based on PLC
Liu xin ,Lu Guang,Yu Ming
School of Northeast Forestry University Information and Computer Engineering College, Harbin 15040

Abstract

The moisture and the concentration of K in the soil in plant ecological park was accurately controlled based on the
SIMATIC S7-300 PLC controller. The hardware of control system based on PLC was set up, at the same time, the
control algorithm used in the moisture and concentration of K was analyzed and the software design of control
system was also completed. At last, the control system was proved to be practicality and superiority by comparing the
quantity and quality of potatoes yield from the two plots, one is controlled by the designed controller and the other is
in the natural growth.

©2012
© 2011Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier Ltd. Selection
B.V. Selection and/or
and/or peer peer-review
review under responsibility
under responsibility of [name Committee.
of ICMPBE International organizer]
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Keyword PLC controller, accurately control, the moisture of soil, the concentration of K

Water and nutrient is necessary condition to ensure normal growth and development of the
plant. To control the water and fertilizer irrigation of plant accurately and to maintain optimum
plant growth in demand, it not only helps reduce water and fertilizer application rate, but also
helps plants produce the quantity and quality. The water-saving irrigation technology of modern
agriculture has provided a condition for accurate irrigation of water and fertilizer, meanwhile,
automation control technology in water-saving irrigation has provided a guarantee to achieve
optimal control of water and fertilizer. Agriculture in developed countries like the United States,
Israel, Netherlands, Canada, Australia has developed a series of versatile, powerful fertilizer
irrigation controllers [2-7], and our irrigation control system in the development of the trial is still
in development stage, has a larger gap with developed countries. With the lack of water resource,
developing a water-saving irrigation control system suitable for the China's soil properties ,with
independent intellectual property rights can not only solve the water shortage situation, but also
has great social and economic benefits [8 ].
In view of this, this article developed a set of irrigation system controller with automatic

1875-3892 © 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of ICMPBE International Committee.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. doi:10.1016/j.phpro.2012.05.085
430 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436
y
regulation on plant moisture, nutrients. Its controlling core of the system is S7-300 PLC which
created by Siemens company. Measure the content of soil water and nitrogen (N), phosphorus
(P ), potassium (K) and other nutrient through the soil moisture sensor and ion sensitive
electrode and input into system, use PID proportional integral control algorithm to control the
system, export digital control signal to directly control the water irrigation system in opening or
closing electromagnetic valve, implement accuracy controlling for water and fertilizer, in order
to ensure the plant growth in the best environment.

1. The hardware design of the control system

PLC is a general-purpose automatic control device, which integrated the traditional relay
control technology, computer technology and communication technology, with control
capability, operational flexibility, high reliability, and suitable for continuous long-term
working characteristics. It is very suitable for high efficient control requirements for plant
ecological park. [9 ]
The control system is designed mainly by soil moisture sensor, the concentration electrode
of ion-sensitive, transmitter, PLC controller, PC, etc, shown in Figure 1.Taking PC as a host
computer, according to plant growth on the demand for water and fertilizer, the system can
achieve parameter setting, data communication, storage, real-time display. And take PLC as
slave computer to achieve the site variable detection, data processing and judgments, the ratio
and implementation of drip irrigation and nutrient solution curve (fertilizer) according to plant
growth control curve, implementation of communication with the host computer.
The lower machine, this paper selected SIMATIC S7-300 series PLC as controller core, the
design of the modular structure, each independent module can be widely combined and
extended. According to the control requirements, it can get the hardware structure of the control
system (shown in Table 1). Because the factors that affect plant growth (such as temperature,
humidity, nutrient solution concentration, etc.) are mostly a multi-input, multiple output,
nonlinear control variables of large time delay [10].Two kinds of impacts on plant growth are
chosen in the experiment as the biggest factor (moisture and fertilizer ) for regulation, control
variables are soil humidity and K + concentration, the two signal input to the PLC A / D module
through the corresponding humidity sensor (Beijing LianChuang SiYuan Science and
technology company FDS100 type) and ion concentration electrode (U.S. Van London-pHoenix
company K001508 type, number of domestic delivery is L2850595). Soil humidity sensor
output 4 ~ 20 mA of current, direct access to the PLC analog input module SM331, output
signal of K + sensitivity selection electrode is weak, it can access to the SM331 module only
after the signal conversion of transmitter. Digital quantity control signals which output from
control system directly drive irrigation electromagnetic valve action, without intermediate links.
Tab. 1 the hardware controller of S7-300PLC
PLCModule NAME ORDER

Power supply Module PS307/5A 6ES7 307-1EA00-0AA0

CPU 314 6ES7 314-

CPU Module
SM331 1AG13-0AB0/v2.6
AI8×12Bit 6ES7 331-
Analog Input Module
7KF02-0AB0
 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436 431

Digitaloutput SM322 6ES7 322-

Module DO16×24 1BH01-0AA0

Fig. 1 the structure frame of plant entironment control system based on S7-300PLC

2. The software design of the control system

2.1 control algorithm research

(1) Integral separation control As the control variable has the particularity in this paper, it
is difficult for the typical PID control algorithm to achieve better control effect, therefore, this
paper uses the separated integral (P-PI) control algorithm, supplemented by way of humidity
PWM automatic control and K concentration.
The main purpose of separation control of Integral is to avoid a large deviation in a short
period of time as the object start, end or significantly change the initial value, also a large
overshoot as well in resulting of the accumulation of integral. In view of this, to set the two
threshold values 1, 2> 0, when the absolute value of deviation is 1 <| e (k) | < 2, input
control link of integral partially; when | e (k) | < 1, input in the integral link all; when | e (k) |>
2, cancel integral part, thus it can achieve separation of integral control . Algorithm is shown
in Equation 1.
T k
u (k ) K p e(k ) Te ( i )
TI i 0
TD (1)
Kp e(k ) e(k 1)
T

Among

u(k) —— t=k Control amount T

T/TI——Integral time
432 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436

TD/T——Differential time

0 e( k ) 2

b 1 e( k ) 2

1 e( k ) 1

Use separation integral control has a smaller overshoot to achieve a shorter settling time.
Because the conventional PID control in the early control, integral accumulated role is too much
to lead to large overshoot and long process of elimination of residual, however, the integral role
of the integral separation is fully applied to eliminate residual characteristics.
The design of choice has the following properties of the function to replace the original
fixed one, its advantages are as below: 1 the continuous,2 the function is simple, and contains
adjustable parameter with clear meaning, simple setting , a large margin adjustment .This can
make the structure of PID is fully used, and the changes from P to PI structural is sliding
continuous [11 ].This paper choice”, “as the setting value.
(2) PWM control In the designed system of this paper, the output control acts on the
electromagnetic valve of spray water through the solid state relay, the control part adopts PWM
power (pressure) or PWM, which control the power through controlling alternating current wave of
a period of time. This system realize the PWM function by controlling on connected time of solid
state relay in a control cycle, DC control side input PWM control pulse wave directly, exchange
control output end connect with the AC power, PWM wave control AC circuit switching, PWM
control mode output is shown in Figure 2. By adjusting the electrifying time, it can adjust
system power of a control cycle.

u (k 2) u (k 1) u (k )

Fig. 2 the PWM illustration of humidity control

2.2 Control system software components and control flow

According to the above control algorithms, use Step7 software to write and debug the
control procedures, Step7 software provides users with a structured program design, a user
program is composed by the startup program, the main program and interrupt response
procedure for a variety of different modules, the operating system has set up the framework of
these modules, What the user need do is to control the system according the specific
requirements of the control tasks, to hierarchical divide the control tasks ,and to program each
modular program, then call these modules in user main program.
Modular way of programming functions make the system easier to manage, and more
convenient for function expansion. Based on the division of system function, the control task is
divided into various functional module. Module is be called through the running state of the
system and the control instructions.
Considering the plants have certain effect on soil and air humidity of the surrounding during
 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436 433

the growth process [12-14]. According the modular software design idea, the main program
module of this control system software mainly includes signal collection filtering module, the
true value calculation on on-site signal module, sensor calibration module, automated control
module, system output module. According to the control algorithm, the control system software
flow diagram of soil moisture of plant ecological park can be shown in figure 3.

u (k ) 0

k
T
u (k ) K p e(k ) e(k )
TI j 0

u u(k)

Fig. 3 the flowchart of humidity control in soil

In this paper, the control humidity of automatic control program is slightly lower than that
of the set point, i.e., when the deviation is less than 0.05, the controller is not active, only call
control function block as it is more than 0.05. By calculating the deviation, call control
algorithm program of integral separation, calculate the energized time in a control cycle of the
solid state relay, control opening and closing of nozzle valve. The PWM control can be
achieved.
According to the aforementioned control algorithm of K concentration, K + concentration
use TP-PID control output as switch quantity, system has the advantages of simple structure,
high reliability, easier debugging. as long as chose a correct clock pulse ,it is earlier to able to
achieve satisfactory control performance, and so long as transfer the algorithm results into
output pulse width, then allow to drop the potash salt, set the dropping cycle and the amount of
each dropping ,the control flow graph is shown in figure 4.
434 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436

3. Plant water, nutrient regulation system performance test

As the control system hardware and software design has been completed, calibrated the
sensor in the room, and then transferred the whole system into trials, in the experiment, planting
the potatoes as an example for testing moisture, nutrient regulation system performance. Two
area plots are both 100 m2, 230 potato plants, give 1 plot a sprinkler under natural conditions,
keep 2 plot irrigating in the designed control system ,After 100 days of growth, then harvest all
potatoes in two areas, do a statistical analysis, the results are shown in Table 2, 3 .
Table 2 represents potato consumption comparison of water and fertilizer in a lifetime of
two plots, this can be seen from the table, Under the control growth, the consumption of water
and fertilizer for same amount potatoes are less than the natural growth condition, therefore the
design of the plant regulation system for water, nutrient has proved its energy saving function.
From Figure 3, although potato plants consume less water and fertilizer under the regulation of
growth, but the potato yield and quality have increased, further demonstrate that the designed
control system has practicability.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, Author put SIMATIC S7-300 PLC as the core controller, design the automatic
control system of plant water and nutrient, apply the separation integral (P-PI ) control
algorithm to automatic control the moisture and nutrient needed for plant growth, complete the
system hardware and software design, set up the whole control platform, and work for a
comparison experiment on the regulation of potato growth ,prove that the designed control
system has the effect on reducing the water consumption and improving the production and
quality of potato. The successful completion of this system has laid the foundation for automatic
irrigation system research of water and fertilizer which is suitable for the development of
China's agricultural conditions.

Tab. 2 the contrast of water fertilizer dosage between different growth conditions
Nitrogen fertilizer Potash consumption The amount
Water
No. plots (kg) (kg) of phosphate (kg)
(kg)
NH4HCO3 KCl Ca(H2PO4)2
1- Natural growth 2365 14.1 3.5 15.6
2- Regulation
1897 10.5 2.7 11.5
of growth

Tab. 3 the contrast of output between different growth conditions

Average
Production Yield per The average size Starch production plant
NO. number of
(kg) plant (kg) (mm) (g)
( )
Natural
65.8 0.31 30 2.6 15.7
growth
Regulation
97.5 0.45 43 3.5 19.1
of growth
 Liu xin et al. / Physics Procedia 33 (2012) 429 – 436 435

eCon1

eCon1 0

eCon 2

eCon 2 0

Fig. 4 the flowchart of K+ concentration control in soil

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