Conference LIS 2022 @ Kota Jambi, Indonesia.

E-ISSN: 2985-4393

ITC 007 :
Simulation of Mamdani Fuzzy Controller for Solar Hybrid
Dryer
Sigit Kurniawan1
1
Department of Electronic Engineering, Control System (Consys) Laboratory, Politeknik
Jambi
sigit@politeknikjambi.ac.id
Sepriyanto2
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politeknik Jambi
sepriyanto@politeknikjambi.ac.id
Sepdian3
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Politeknik Jambi
sepdian@politeknikjambi.ac.id

ABSTRACT. Hybrid solar dryer is one of the dryers that has been developed for agricultural-
products processing. The combination of two heat-energy types become one of
solution for the availability of drying energy so that it can be used continuously. In
addition, the availability of solar energy varies and is very weather-dependent. In order
to overcome this problem, the secondary-energy usage is needed. This research is
related to the Mamdani fuzzy control simulation for regulating the hybrid drying
temperature with energy sources that come from solar heat and biomass combustion.
The system input consist of the drying room temperature and the temperature
difference between the solar collector and the drying room temperature, while the
output consist of fan rotation for producing forced convection in the drying system.

KEYWORDS: HYBRID SOLAR DRYER; FUZZY LOGIC; TEMPERATURE CONTROL

1 INTRODUCTION
Solar dryer is one of dryer widely used for the drying process, especially in the drying
of agricultural products. The advantage of solar dryer is that it has cheap price because it
utilizes energy freely available in nature so that for a drying process with a large enough
capacity, the energy cost is still relatively cheap. However, the use of solar energy for the
drying process has deficiency because the energy used cannot be controlled directly. In
addition, solar energy is strongly influenced by weather conditions so that its utilization for
the drying process is often not optimal (Zoukit et al., 2019).
Temperature control in the drying process has a major role, not only the temperature
value must be matching but also the temperature condition must be constant. This condition
cannot be achieved if only relying on solar energy where there is energy limitation. There
must be supporting energy in order to achieve the matching temperature conditions that has
been set. In addition, the constant temperature also cannot be achieved if only rely on solar
energy alone. Therefore, the solar energy utilization needs to be combined with other heat
energy such as electric heating, gas combustion, or biomass combustion where this
combination is known as hybrid dryer (Sinadia, 2018).
The settings of hybrid dryer temperature need to be done in order to get an optimal
drying process. Some agricultural products have optimal drying temperature at 60⁰C.
However, the temperature in hybrid dryer is often not constant. It requires considerable effort
for getting a stable temperature condition on a hybrid dryer due to its non-linear nature and
complicated mathematical model approach from the system which has many inputs
(Abakarov et al., 2012). Based on this case, the setting of the solar dryer system will use the
fuzzy control method.
Based on previous research, fuzzy control is widely applied in hybrid solar dryer.
However, most of the previous research used fuzzy parameters in the form of drying
temperature set values, environmental temperature, and solar radiation (Zoukit et al., 2019).

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In addition, the regulation of hybrid solar drying temperature is carried out simultaneously by
combining solar energy sources with other non-separate hybrid energy sources. In this
research, a study was conducted on the application of fuzzy control system for temperature
regulation in a hybrid solar dryer with separate setting pattern.

2 METHOD
To simulate the fuzzy controller, it is necessary to make a mathematical model of the
drying system where the model can be built from two combinations of two mathematical
models of the drying system, such as: (1) a solar dryer system model, and (2) an electric
dryer system model. To obtain the transfer function of the two models, this study uses
experimental data from Zoukit et. All (2019) as will be explained as follows:

2.1 Solar Mode

The transfer function of the drying system with solar mode can be determined based
on the measurement data of the heat rate under uncontrolled conditions (Figure 1). The data
was taken in sunny condition where the maximum radiation achieved (around 11.00 to
13.00) where the sampling time is every 10 minutes. Based on the measurement shown in
the graph, it can be seen that the system gain value is 0.23 and the system response time
is 30 minutes.

Figure1. Solar intensity and air temperature variation

Using this value, the transfer function of the drying system for solar drying mode can be
written as follows:
0.23
𝑇 (𝑠 ) =
30𝑠 + 1

2.2 Electrical Mode

The transfer function of the drying system for electrical mode is also obtained from
the heat rate measurement data in the system using an electric heating source under
uncontrolled conditions (Figure 2). The data was taken at night where there was no other
heat source apart from electric heaters. Based on the graph shown in Figure 2, it can be
seen that the gain of the system is 40 and the response time is 10 minutes.

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Figure 2. Electrical power and air temperature variation

Using this value, the transfer function of the drying system for the electric drying mode can
be written as follows:
40
𝑇 (𝑠 ) =
10𝑠 + 1

2.3 Fuzzy Principle

Fuzzy Controller with Mamdani inference method consists of defuzzification,
fuzzification, and IF-Then rule (Zoukit et al., 2019). The Fuzzy Controller has input member
that is an error value (e), which is the difference value between the set point and the process
variable which is the temperature value of the drying room system, while the output member
of the Fuzzy Controller is electrical power (Pe) for the electric heater that is a scale value of
0 to 1. The fuzzy rule is made based on the value of e which can be a negative or positive
value. A negative e value means that the drying room temperature is higher than the set
value so that the power for the heater must be lowered. On the contratry, if the e value is
positive it means the room temperature from the drying rate system is smaller than the set
temperature so it is necessary to add energy (Pe).

(a)

(b)
Figure 3. Fuzzy members: (a) Input Member, dan (b) Output Member

Table 1. Rules Fuzzy Mamdani

Rule Error (e) Power (Pe)
1 Very Negative Zero
2 Negative Zero
3 Zero Zero
4 Near Zero
5 Positive Medium
6 Very Positive Max

Table 1. Shows the rules of fuzzy, because the nature of the regulated power is
additional power for the system, if the error value is negative or zero, it means that the drying
room temperature has reached the set point value that exceeds the set point value that lead
the elimination of logic when conditions occur the need for external heating power. On the
other hand, if the error value is positive or very positive then in this condition the heating
power requirement for the system can be of moderate or maximum value.

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2.4 Solar Electrical Dryer control model

The dryer model is built based on two sources of heat energy, that is solar radiation
and electric heating. Radiation energy is the main energy used in the drying process. Under
normal circumstances, the requirement for a drying room temperature (60⁰C) cannot be
achieved if it only relies on heat from the sun so it needs additional heat energy from an
electric heater. In the application, the electric heater is easier to be controlled than radiation
heat source. Because of that, the use of heat energy from the electric heater is controlled in
the hybrid solar electric dryer model. Figure 4 is a block diagram of the control model for the
Solar-Electrical Dryer and the Simulink-model made in this study.

(a)

(b)

Figure 4. Solar-Electrical Dryer control model: (a) Diagram blok, dan (b) Simulink’s model

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Tujuan utama dari pengujian ini adalah melihat respon sistem terhadap nilai set
point 600C, nilai 600 C dipilih sebagai konsekuensi bahwa rata-rata temperatur optimal
untuk pemanasan produk-produk pertaniaan sebesar nilai tersebut.

The main purpose of this test is to see the response of the system from the set point
value (600C). 600C was chosen as a consequence that the optimal average temperature
for heating agricultural products.

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Figure 5. Simulation result of temperature control Hybrid Solar-Electrical Dryer

Figure 5 shows the results of the matlab-simulation of the temperature control from
Hybrid Solar-Electrical Dryer. for a set point value (600C), the response time is 10 minutes.
The speed of response time from the system is supported because there is energy support
from the electric heater at the beginning of the heating until a steady state condition is
achieved. Then the electrical sources use decreases as the solar energy increases. One of
the benefits of this energy regulation mode is that we can control the utilization of supporting
energy such as electricity or gas so that the use can be reduced. With fuzzy control, the
implementation of energy regulation is simpler compared to other controls such as PID
(Narwane et al., 2020), when the system has reached the specified temperature then the
error value will be zero or positive which causes the system to cut off energy from electric
heating.

4 CONCLUSION
Based on the test results, it can be seen that the Mamdani fuzzy controller can be
applied to regulate the dryer temperature on the hybrid solar dryer, where the temperature
setting is only done on the secondary heat source, that is an electric heater depends on the
system error value that follow at that time. For a set point value 600C, the response time
system is faster using only heating solar, which is 10 minutes with steady state conditions
at 570 C.

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is an Internal Basic Research of Politeknik Jambi in 2022.

REFERENCES

Abakarov, A. et al. (2012) ‘Control of a solar dryer through using a fuzzy logic and
low-cost model-based sensor’, in International Conference of Agricultural Engineering.
CIGR-Ageng2012, pp. 1–16.

Narwane, V. S. et al. (2020) ‘Comparative analysis of PID and fuzzy logic controller :
A case of furnace temperature control’, Journal of Current Science and Technology, 10(2),
pp. 109–120.

Sinadia, B. S. (2018) THE DESIGN OF FUZZY-EXPERT CONTROL SYSTEM IN

HIBRID SOLAR-POWER DRYING INSTRUMENT AND LPG. Universitas Hasanuddin
Makassar.

Zoukit, A. et al. (2019) ‘Design of mamdani type fuzzy controller for a hybrid solar-

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electric dryer : case study of clay drying’, in 2019 6th International Conference on Control,
Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT). Paris: IEEE, pp. 1332–1337.

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