Development of on-line detection device for grain moisture contentusing microwave reflection method

Moisture content is one of the important indicators in grain harvesting, trading, storage and processing. High moisture content will lead to a series of problems of grain such as mildew, deterioration, shortened storage time, lower transaction price and higher processing cost. With the development of precision agriculture, accurate detection of grain moisture content can also accurately assess the growing situation of crops, and then provide guidance for the next season’s crop planting. Compared with the drying method, the capacitance method and the electric resistance method, the microwave method is easy to realize the non-destructive measurement of the grain moisture content, which is an important direction of moisture content detection. In the field of on-line detection of moisture content of rice and wheat in combine harvesters, foreign related research started earlier, and enterprises have commercialized, but this technology is still in the research stage in China. Aiming at the problem that the rice-wheat combine harvester is difficult to accurately measure the moisture content of wheat and rice during harvesting operation, this paper studied a non-destructive on-line detection method of grain moisture content based on microwave reflection method, established the grain moisture content measurement model, designed a non-destructive on-line detection device for grain moisture content used on rice-wheat combine harvesters. The device used a 450 MHz microwave measurement module to measure the moisture content of rice and wheat non-destructively. The voltage conversion circuit was designed to convert microwave parameters into voltage signals, and the average filtering algorithm was used for signal filtering to reduce the impact of interference factors. Finally, the moisture content detection model of rice and wheat, which was established by the calibration experiment, was used to calculate the moisture content. The calculation result was displayed on the display in real time via CAN bus communication. Due to the insufficient installation space in rice-wheat combine harvester, the structure of the detecting device was designed and optimized, and the circuit portion and the sampling mechanism were integrated in a compact structure. Based on the above theoretical research, technology development and structural design, this paper carried out laboratory static experiments and field harvesting experiments. The laboratory static experiment used rice and wheat to illustrate the establishment process of the grain moisture content detection model: 30 groups of rice and 30 groups of wheat samples were prepared, moisture contents and voltages calibration experiment was completed, the rice and wheat moisture content detection models was established and the experimental results were analyzed. The field harvesting experiment was verified the practicability and reliability of the grain moisture content detecting device with rice as the test object. The experiment results show that the performance standard deviations of the laboratory static experiment and the field harvest experiment are 0.458 3% and 1.078 0%, respectively, and the relative error are around 2.5% and 5%, respectively. Moisture content measuring range of the detection device for rice and wheat is 14%-34%, which meets the project requirements. © 2019, Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.