A case study was carried out on 23 storage sites and over 500,000 tonnes of stored cereals. The results show that the automated control mode is the most efficient, compared to programmed and / or manual ventilation mode. Having this kind of data enables the storage organisation to adopt a continuous improvement approach with each storage campaign, with the aim of achieving 100% efficient ventilation.
Javelot's data teams analysed all the ventilation and temperature data over a period of 12 months, with the aim of measuring the performance of the various ventilation methods used on the storage sites (thanks to the availability of the ventilation and temperature data on Javelot's Store&save used by the customer throughout their campaign).
"We analysed each ventilation session and considered that a session was effective if there was a cooling effect between the start and the end of the session", explains Julien Bernuchon from Javelot's data team. In the end, across all the sites, the results showed a real advantage for automated ventilation, which is 57 % more efficient than programmed mode and 150 % more efficient than manual mode.
Implementing a progress initiative
It is logical that the automated ventilation mode is the most efficient, since it is based on a real-time analysis of the difference between the outside temperature and the temperature in the silo, thus enabling ventilation to be triggered more precisely, during the right periods. This type of analysis not only confirms this, but above all provides the storage organisation with an overview of its performance and enables it to implement improvement measures and raise awareness of good practice among operators in the field. "You can only improve what you measure", says Julien Bernuchon.
Thanks to the hypervision enabled by the application, the storage organisation has an exhaustive view of ventilation data site by site. On average, 73% of the ventilation sessions were steered automatically, compared to 21% manually and 6% programmed mode. However, there is considerable variation between the storage sites: while some use almost 100% automated ventilation, others are still mainly using the manual ventilation mode. This makes it possible to have a precise diagnosis for each site, to know where we are starting from and to set up progress plans with the operators, to identify problematic situations and to find solutions. For example, on a site that uses 100% automated ventilation but does not have good results in terms of ventilation efficiency, this can indicate a problem with the sizing of the equipment, for example.
Significant reduction in energy consumption.
At the same time, operators are also being made aware of energy consumption. Over the whole of the analysed campaign compared to the energy consumption of the 3 previous storage campaigns (steered without Javelot), a 16% reduction in energy consumption was measured in the first year (historical consumption data recovered from distributors in 10-minute increments, then isolated from consumption linked to ventilation). But there is clearly still room for improvement: increasing the proportion of automated ventilation to 100% and improving the efficiency of the ventilation sessions to move towards 100% efficient sessions.