Product Blending Systems

IPACT has supplied four product blending systems to a large food plant, each consisting of a Level 1 processor and several HMI/SCADA nodes.  These systems controlled the blend of from five (5) to seven (7) products, each in a separate hopper. Hopper flows were controlled via a variable-frequency drive motorized belt.  As material flows could not be measured directly, flow control had to be accomplished by reading a (noisy) analog weight signal from each hopper. 

IPACT engineered an innovative “act-wait” control algorithm that was adaptive and utilized digital filtering techniques because classical control techniques (e.g. time-based PID) were inadequate for this system. 

We also developed a blend adjustment algorithm for each of these four systems that manipulated the percentage of each component within its allowable tolerances in order to use up abundant components more quickly while preserving limited components, thus producing the maximum amount of blended product for any configuration of hopper weights.

Integrated Process Automation & Control Technologies