Hybrid Solar Thermal/Electricity Automated Oven

Abstract

This paper presents hybrid solar thermal/electricity automated oven. The work compares sliding mode control (SMC) to traditional PID control of the oven system using MATLAB/Simulink 2014b model. SMC control method shows faster rise and settling time. The control technique has been designed to automate change of temperature level of the oven by accepting multiple reference inputs. This has been implemented using microcontroller programed in C++. Flat-plate solar thermal collector and paint curing oven have also been implemented for experimental test. The results obtain from the experiments are in conformity to the simulation results. The collector delivers 43.27% of the total energy required to operate the oven up to 120°C at 200W/m2 solar insolation. Calculation of payback period for commercial viability on the cost of the collector installation indicates a year and four months for an average insolation of seven hours per day. These results demonstrate that the research work is effective and solves the problem of temperature control in curing modern organic paints and the challenge of power requirements in the operation of oven.

Development of an Adaptive Fuzzy-Neural Controller for Temperature Control in a Brick Tunnel Kiln

“…The automatic system can precisely adjust the kiln's heat according to the specific requirements at each stage of brick production. The quality of bricks produced by this automatic system is significantly better than that by manual control, and damage to bricks during firing is avoided because the temperature is automatically adjusted [3][4][5]. This research focuses on developing an adaptive control system approach, specifically an adaptive fuzzy-neural control that conforms to the specific requirements, such as temperature control accuracy, energy savings, and environmental protection, of brick tunnel kilns.…”