A Design of a Solar Fermentation System on Chicken Manure by Fuzzy Logic Temperature Control

Abstract

Traditional chicken manure fermentation is mostly natural composting or exposure, which is not only time consuming but also susceptible to weather, resulting in uncontrollable quality and environmental pollution. This research aims to build a smart solar chicken manure fermentation system to control the conditions of chicken manure fermentation effectively, improve quality, and solve the problems of environmental pollution. Hot water produced by solar energy is the heat source for the main system of fermentation, and a backup supplemental heat source by gas heater is applied. The mechanism of drive, agitation, ventilation and drying as well as temperature conditions are controlled by the Arduino’s control core. Fuzzy logic is applied to maintain the optimal temperature, so that the system decomposes the bacteria optimally and reduces the consumed time for fermentation. The chicken manure humidity can be decreased from 70% to 30%, and the effective control system temperature is between 40 and 42 °C, while the pH value is changed from 8.7 to 7.4. The sample analysis of the fermentation also shows that there was 13.12% more organic matter in the chicken manure that added the decomposing bacteria than which did not contain the decomposing bacteria.