Integración de Tolvas de productos medios para la dosificación de materia prima en una planta de balanceado

Abstract

In the present thesis work ’Integration of medium product hoppers for the dosing of raw materials in a feed plant,’ the objective is to improve dosing times. Before the implementation, there were thirteen hoppers, each equipped with a screw at the bottom for dosing. These thirteen screws were arranged with a frequency converter that remained active, and the PLC sent the activation signal to the contactor coil. This dosing process was slow because with a single frequency converter for multiple motors, dosing had to be done one by one until the scale had the weights of each ingredient. For this reason, it was decided to include a subsystem for medium hoppers, which are bins storing smaller quantities in a recipe. While dosing the macro ingredients with larger quantities in the recipes, at the same time, the hoppers for medium ingredients, heavy liquids, and micro-liquids are dosed, thus reducing dosing times. To be more precise, several tests were conducted on the dosing process, determining that each hopper must have a tolerance during dosing, meaning there should be a margin of error of +- 5 % in the dosed ingredient quantity. This entire process is monitored by a SCADA system linked to a database and a UNITED management system. To prevent errors, production orders are initiated from UNITED indicating the order number, recipe code, ingredient code, and quantity. With this data, Ignition (SCADA) links all these codes with those in the database to provide the dosing sequence to the hoppers or allow manual operation by the operator.