Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The broad target audience includes producers and supply chain pre-processing partners of cellulosic biomass for the advanced biofuels and bioproducts industries. Technical data is of keen interest to designers and manufacturers of biomass dryers. Model predictive control systems are of direct interest and benefit to operators of biomass dryers in rural communities, processing depots, and at biorefineries. For this reporting period, the target audience has been the technical community involved in dryer control development and validation, dryer manufacturers, dryer operators, and plant designers Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The effort made to reach the technical community involved in dryer control development has been through discussions at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual International Meeting in Spokane, Washington. We have sustained conversation with both a potential end-user dryer manufacturer and drying equipment distributer and though interaction with the Schatz Energy Lab dryer operations crew. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We have completed all milestones of our Phase II project. In addition to the original project objectives, we also successfully implemented a conditions-based automatic control on a commercial small-scale moving bed dryer from Norris Thermal Industries. The modified dryer and control system were demonstrated to Aaron Norris, President of Norris Thermal and drying industry advisors in March of 2018. The first week of April, Project Director Dooley met with our potential launch customer for the control system in Tennessee. The results of testing and demonstrations suggest that all of our value proposition objectives can be met. Energy savings of 18% were achieved for the automated dryer in comparison to a similar, but non-automated dryer.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/16 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period, the target audience included academic and industry cooperators. Changes/Problems:1. We requested and were approved to have a one-year no-cost extension on the project to August 31, 2018. This change was necessary due to the time required for purchase and installation of a custom dryer unit rathter than modifiying an existing dryer at a cooperator's site. 2. In the time since the previous progress update, we completed the baseline field trial of an existing dryer (proposal Task 1.4) owned and operated by the Schatz Energy Research Center in Arcata, Ca. Unfortunately, the trial reveal that the potential for automated control was not possible due to an inability of the standard Belt-O-Matic dryer to maintain target air flow uniformity and temperature parameters. If the target parameters cannot be maintained, it is impossible to tell if control system is accurately predicting the drying time and energy. a. Conversations with the manufacturer Norris Thermal Industries (who is also our intended launch licensee) concluded that; a) there were no existing dryers that could take advantage of our control scheme; b) their current dryer designs could be modified to meet our needs; and c) that piloting an improved dryer along with the advanced controls would be good. Thus, with company funds separate from the USDA SBIR program, we committed to purchase a basic Norris Thermal dryer system that we could add air handling and heating systems to for testing the advanced control system. That caused a 4-month delay in the project as we waited for the new dryer to be designed, built, and delivered to us. 3. We successfully added and electronics and controls specialist to our staff in the fall of 2016, and brought on two interns in May of 2027 to accelerate the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The project provided summer employment in 2016 for one engineering student summer intern, and for two additional interns in 2017. The engineering and technical staff at Forsest Concepts have invested significant time to develop additional competency in the sensors and controls arena via independent and group study. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We continue to meet with prospective early adopters to explain the context of our advanced control system and to learn of their unique needs. Meetings and discussions have been held with a biomass thermochemical conversion company in Tennessee, a fruit drying company in central Washington, and a pellet mill in western Washington to deliver our results to their managers and engineers. The engineering specialists on the project attended the ASABE Annual International Meeting to participate in technical sessions and committee meetings where the project is discussed with peers. Those conversations both deliver results from our project and garners input from peers that improves the project. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Final assembly and electronic installation is expected to be complete by the end of August 2017. As soon as the new test platform is mechanically operational, we will perform the experiments of proposal Task 1.5: Validate control system on moving bed dryer using Forest Concepts dryer We will host visits from our dryer industry and academic collaborators and provide demonstrations and workshops on the technology in the fall of 2017. The SBIR Phase II program will conclude with an open webinar, publication of conference papers, and publication of one or more industry trade journal stories. The Commercialization Plan is being updated and finalized in cooperation with the USDA LARTA commercialization assistance program. It is still not clear whether the optimal commercialization approach will be to establish a dryer control systems professional services group within our company or to license the code to one or more existing dryer manufacturers. Visits from prospective licensees and commercialization partners will happen once the advanced control system is validated and performance data is available. We are currently preparing complete documentation of the electronic control hardware and software being installed on our new dryer. That documentation will be updated as needed and become a major output of the project, as well as valuable resource for licensees.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In the time since the previous progress update, we completed the baseline field trial of an existing Norris Thermal belt-type dryer (proposal Task 1.4) owned and operated by the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Ca. Forest Concepts added sensors and data acquisition to their existing dryer to quantify air flow and temperature distribution as well as energy consumption. The results showed that the dryer was very thermally inefficient and that air flow was so nonuniform that our contol models could not be tested. We also found that the industry-standard updraft air flow configuration resulted in frequent random blowouts in the chip bed that resulted in localized loss of differential pressure across the bed. The test results convinced us that we needed to either find or purchase a down-draft belt dryer that had good air flow, uniform heating, and sufficient control over performance parameters that we could conduct statistically significant evaluations and validation of our proposed model-predictive controls versus a base case of all-manual control. We subsequently purchased, with funds independent of the SBIR project, a basic Norris Thermal Model 123-B belt dryer (24-inch belt width and 10-feet maximum effective belt length) without any air handling or heating components. We then engineered and fabricated a custom air handling and heating system to enable testing of the advanced control system. The new dryer is nearing mechanical completion. The heat source is propane to enable future relocation and field trials in rural communities and with prospective licensees. Heat capacity is 675,000 BTU/hr with a 30:1 turndown capability that is computer controlled. The air:fuel ratio is adjusted in real-time using a pair of dynamic profile plates to maximize thermal performance and minimize emissions. The computer-controlled air handling system has a maximum air flow of 3,500 cfm at 4.0 inches of water pressure, which can provide air velocity of up to 6.25 ft/sec (1.9 m/sec) through the drying bed. Infeed and outfeed conveyors are variable speed and controlled as part of the optimization software. The control algorithms have been refined and are being incorporated into a computerized control to be connected to the new dryer. The control system includes a data monitoring and modeling module that is the model-predictive element, a PLC dryer operations control module, and the dryer manufacturer's dryer mechanical systems drive control module. The data monitoring and model-predictive module currently involves more than 15,000 lines of code. Safety features tied to the controls include burner ignition and flame stability monitoring, over-temperature shutdown, automated start-up and shut-down sequencing, and a temperature triggered internal water sprinkler fire suppression system.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience:The broad target audience includes producers and supply chain pre-processing partners of cellulosic biomass for the advanced biofuels and bioproducts industries. Technical data is of keen interest to designers and manufacturers of biomass dryers. Model predictive control systems are of direct interest and benefit to operators of biomass dryers in rural communities, processing depots, and at biorefineries. For this reporting period, the principle target audience has been the technical community involved in dryer control development and validation with respect to appropriate tools necessary for said community to be successful. Changes/Problems:At the initiation of this grant cycle, Forest Concepts was heavily involved in the commercialization of another SBIR technology and had not yet filled two open development engineer positions. The shortage of staffing early in this project is evident in that only 1.2 FTE years have been spent vs the 1.6 budgeted. We have since added to our Engineering and Technical staff to better meet the project demands while maintaining the commercialization effort. Although we are currently behind, we expect to complete the project and all deliverables on time and on budget. Changes we are making going forward include: Originally, we planned to validate the entire control system on our RDA. We will validate that the MEOP algorithm outputs the minimum energy settings for a material using the RDA. However, the RDA is not amenable for real-time iterative simulation of continuous operation of a moving bed dryer. We will perform the continuous operation testing on a commercial dryer detailed below. We will change the location of our quantitative assessment of the current technology from Norris Thermal's facility in Indiana to the Schatz Energy Lab in Humboldt, CA. This simplifies logistics and provides access to Schatz engineers and dryer operator's expertise. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The effort made to reach the technical community involved in dryer control development has been through presentation of work at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Annual International Meeting in Orlando, Florida and publication of work in the ASABE transactions Journal. We have sustained conversation with both a potential end-user dryer manufacturer and drying equipment distributer. We have also attended a demonstration hosted by Humboldt State University under their DOE BRDI Waste-2-Wisdom project. We have raised awareness of the current challenges regarding the drying step of biomass feedstock process though interaction with other demonstration attendees and in-depth discussion with the Schatz Energy Lab dryer operations crew. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Over the next reporting period, we plan to finalize the model-predictive control model and implement it on a moving bed dryer for validation and refinement. We will then quantify the incremental value of each control component and compare the cost of implementation to the resulting CAPEX and OPEX to current control systems. The final step of this project will be to conceptualize a system for the next generation dryer with integration of the state-of-the-art of advanced control that is not constrained by existing operating parameter bounds and estimate savings for the system CAPEX and OPEX over current technologies.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Drying of biomass materials results from a complex balance of several controllable dryer operating parameters and several more non-controllable material and local atmospheric conditions. It takes years of experience before and operator can reliably adjust the controllable parameters of a dryer to achieve a target output moisture content despite changing non-controllable material and local and atmospheric conditions. To make the appropriate adjustments to achieve the targeted product dryness and do so in the most energy efficient manner is even more difficult. To develop an automated control system sophisticated enough to achieve both a specified product dryness and minimize energy, the control system needs to know something about how the product reacts to changes in controllable parameters and to non-controllable conditions and scenarios. Much of this the effort during this reporting period has been to expand our material database and refine interpretation of the data to define relationships necessary for programming the controller by performing experiments in the Forest Concepts Research Drying Apparatus (RDA). This process has been performed with continued interaction from the full spectrum of model development specialist in academia to dryer manufacturers to dryer operators who would ultimately benefit from the technology. A major undertaking in the past 8 months was a "pathways experiment" that brought together our low-energy comminution system (Crumbler®) and drying into an integrated system. That study compared six paths from green wood chips to sub-mm scale dry biomass feedstocks appropriate for use in the wood pellet, gasification, and catalytic pyrolysis industries. You will see in the report that follows, that drying time can be reduced from approximately 20 minutes for raw wood chips to less than 5 minutes at the same drying conditions for feedstocks that are milled into small sizes before drying. One of our potential launch licensees, Andritz, has already promoted this outcome to their customers.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Accepted
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Lanning, C. J., Dooley, J. H., & Slosson, J. C. (2016). Level of Sensing for Biomass Dryer Control and Optimization. Paper No. 2449664. Paper presented at the 2016 ASABE Annual International Meeting, July 17-20, 2016, Orlando, FL.
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