Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8

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Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food

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Research paper

Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration

in canned food sterilisation
Chao-Chin Chung a, Ho-Hsien Chen a, *, Ching-Hua Ting b, **
a
Department of Food Science, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, 1, Shuefu Road, Neipu, Pingtung, 91201, Taiwan, ROC
b
Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, National Chiayi University, 300, University Road, Chiayi, 60004, Taiwan, ROC

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Autoclave thermal process is an important sterilisation procedure in the food canning industry. The
Received 30 November 2014 performance of sterilisation is determined by the heating temperature and duration and the pressure in
Received in revised form the autoclave, as well as by product's properties. In this study, a fuzzy logic controller is developed to
18 September 2015
maintain a small steady-state temperature error (121 ± 0.5
C) for an sterilising duration (F0) by adapting
Accepted 30 November 2015
Available online xxx
to process deviations in the autoclave. The precise temperature control associated with on-line F0
updation assures food stuff that can be heated at the specified temperature for an expected duration and
could lead therefore to successful sterilisation. The controls are implemented on a PLC (programmable
Keywords:
Fuzzy control
logic controller) for affordability, reliability, and robustness and the operations are supervised using a
F0 value web-based SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for remotely supervisory moni-
On-line updation toring and control.
PLC © 2015 Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights
Sterilisation reserved.
Thermal process

1. Introduction atmosphere. The sterilising duration is defined by the F0 value of

The food industry often adopts heat treatment to sterilise can-
ned foodstuffs for food preservation and safety. The heat inactivates
residing microorganisms and existing enzymes in the foodstuffs.
The shelf life of the sterilised food is extended as a result of absent
pathogenic microorganism and inert microbial development
(Olaimat and Holley, 2012). However, insufficient thermal steri-
lisation can degrade the nutrition of the product. Hence food
sterilisation by heat treatment is a compromise between minimum
damage to the sensory and nutritional quality and the maximum
safety and shelf life. Such a compromise is arrived at through
adjusting the heating temperature and the sterilising time (Zanoni
et al., 2003; Farid and Abdul Ghani, 2004; Siriwattanayotin et al.,
2006; Teixeira and Sun, 2012).
Canned foodstuffs sterilised thermally are heated at a specified
temperature for a prescribed duration in a pressurized autoclave
(Singh and Heldmon, 2001). The sterilising temperature is main-
tained above the boiling point of the water in the autoclave
* Corresponding author.
** Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hhchen@mail.npust.edu.tw (H.-H. Chen), cting@mail.ncyu.
edu.tw (C.-H. Ting).
sterilisation (lethality of Clostridium botulinum at 121
C), a product
dependent parameter (Teixeira and Sun, 2012; Kumar et al., 2001).
During microbial inactivation by heat, appropriate combination of
sterilization temperature and duration can reduce pathogenic or
spoilage microorganisms to an acceptable level and, at the same
time, cause minimum effect on product quality and acceptability. In
batch processing, the temperature and the duration are determined
through heat penetration test (Farid and Abdul Ghani, 2004;
Siriwattanayotin et al., 2006). These pre-determined sterilising
parameters may be invalid or inadequate because of process devi-
ation, e.g. unexpected loss of autoclave temperature or insufficient
steam pressure (Simpson et al., 2007a). This may lead to unac-
ceptable products: a lower temperature or a shorter period causes
insufficient sterilisation and hence leaves excessive harmful mi-
croorganisms in the foodstuff; a higher temperature or a longer
period results in over sterilisation, food nutrition degradation, and
energy wasting (Kumar et al., 2001; Simpson et al., 2007b).
Food properties vary with species, process treatment, temper-
ature, and concentration, which increase the difficulty in describing
and predicting the properties of a product in modelling heat and
mass transfer. Sterilisation could be easily impaired by the air
residing in the autoclave. The residing air develops a thermal
resistance which introduces unsteady and uneven sterilisation

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
1881-8366/© 2015 Asian Agricultural and Biological Engineering Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
2 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8
heating, and incurs a hazardous pressure in the cooling stage which
leads to can deformation (Farid and Abdul Ghani, 2004). This pro-
cess deviation is detrimental to the performance of temperature
control. Hence the air should be exhausted from the autoclave
during sterilisation (Kumar et al., 2001; Akterian, 1999). However,
the incurred system uncertainty will lead to poor temperature
control by conventional control schemes. The literature demon-
strates, in temperature control of bio-process, that a fuzzy model
based control has better performance and less control effort than
conventional controls (Moelbak, 1999; Honda and Kobayashi, 2000;
Thompson and Dexter, 2005; Chung et al., 2010). Fuzzy control is
more intuitive and mainly relies on operator's expertise and
knowledge (Lee and Kwon, 2007). This provides the engineer a
framework for modelling the non-linearity and complexity of a
food process which normally comes with insufficient or imprecise
system information (Honda and Kobayashi, 2000; Chung et al.,
2010; Lee and Kwon, 2007; O'Connor et al., 2002). However,
fuzzy control is blind to process dynamics and its performance may
be impaired by process deviations. Hence on-line system identifi-
cation of the controlled process solves the air exhausting problem
and provides a stable and secure operation in heating process (Lee
et al., 2002). However, on-line system identification demands
tedious numerical computation which is a big challenge or even an
impossible mission for implementation on hardware with limited
numerical computation capability.
Existing sterilisers calculate the target sterilising time (F0 value)
using the monogram method with a thermal death curve (Farid and
Abdul Ghani, 2004; Stoforos, 1995). The conventional approach for
calculating the F0 value is time-consuming for PLC (programmable
logic controller) implementation and is unsuitable for on-line
adaptation to process deviations. The F0 value is sensitive to tem-
perature variation, so automatic control is always required during
the heating cycle (Syafiie et al., 2011). An inadequate F0 value may
result in over or insufficient sterilisation. This problem is solved
using on-line compensation for process deviations through
updating the F0 value in real time.
The objectives of this study are (1) to develop a fuzzy logic
controller to control sterilization temperature and (2) to apply a
lookup table for calculating the sterilization duration F0. The
developed control scheme and F0 calculation strategy are to be
implemented using PLC which has limited numerical processing
capability but is popular in industries. The fuzzy logic controller
performs precise temperature control and makes on-line correc-
tions of unexpected process deviations in autoclave operation. Such
a control scheme has the same effect of on-line system identifica-
tion but without the demand of delicate numerical computation. By
this way, processors can minimize, even prevent the occurrence of
deviant processes. Control data is organised as a lookup table
suitable for PLC implementation.
2. Thermal sterilisation
2.1. Fundamentals
The major objective of thermal processing in the food industry is
to guarantee food safety by killing microorganisms and inactivating
their enzymes or other metabolites. Most microorganisms can be
inactivated by heat but some heat-bearable ones can survive in a
certain temperature range (Datta and Teixeira, 1988; Kumar et al.,
1990). During microbial inactivation by heat, the right combina-
tion of temperature and time is important to allow two goals in a
process: eliminate or reduce pathogenic or spoilage microorgan-
isms to an acceptable level and, at the same time, cause minimum
effect on product quality and acceptability.
Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
In food sterilisation by thermal treatment, the DT value of the C.
botulinum in a foodstuff determines the suitability of putting the
foodstuff on the market. The DT value measures the duration that
90% of microorganisms are reduced at a specific temperature T. A
microorganism with a larger DT is more bearable to heat. The effect
of temperature on the rate of microbial destruction is described by
the above parameters, as (Teixeira and Sun, 2012; Singh and
Heldmon, 2001; Stoforos, 1995):
DT ¼ DTref 10ð121TÞ=Z (1)
where DTref is the 90% reduction duration at the reference tem-
perature 121
C and Z indicates the change in the death rate based
on the temperature T.
The F value, known as the thermal death time or the safety in-
dex, determines the sterilising duration required to achieve a
certain inactivation ratio in the number of microorganisms at
temperature T (Teixeira and Sun, 2012):


N
F ¼ DT log 0 (2)
N
where N0 is the number of microorganisms before sterilisation and
N is the number of surviving microorganisms after an F duration of
sterilisation at temperature T.
The sterilising duration is determined by F ¼ 12DT when the
heating temperature is exactly maintained at 121
C (Singh and
Heldmon, 2001). In practice, it is impossible to maintain the steri-
lising temperature exactly and continually at 121
C in autoclave
operation. Hence the F0 index which explicitly includes the steri-
lising duration is used as an alternative to assure adequate steri-
lisation. An F0 value defines the reference thermal death time
within which, a certain population of microorganisms is eradicated
at 121
C with a death rate characteristic Z ¼ 10
C (Teixeira and
Sun, 2012; Singh and Heldmon, 2001). The F0 value at a specific
temperature T in
C is calculated by:
Zt
F0 ¼ 10ðT121Þ=Z dt (3)
0
Inclusion of heating and cooling in the F0 index avoids inade-
quate sterilisation (Farid and Abdul Ghani, 2004). The F0 formula
describes how thermal inactivation of microorganism populations
can be quantified as a function of time and temperature.
2.2. Horizontal autoclave
Fig. 1 shows the horizontal autoclave developed in house for
study into canned food sterilisation. The autoclave has a capacity of
5000 kg and an interior size of 3.5 m long and 1.0 m in diameter. All
field devices are controlled and process responses are collected,
using a PLC (FX2N-4AD-PT, Mitsubishi, Japan). Process information
is displayed on a human machine interface (HMI) (UG220H-SC4,
Fuji, Japan). The PLC is supervised by a supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA) system which was developed in house based
on the LabVIEW software (Version 6i, National Instruments, USA).
The SCADA system performs F0 calculation, data logging, and pro-
cess monitoring. The internal status of the autoclave is monitored
with a surveillance camera (AXIS 2100 Video Server, Axis Com-
munications, Taiwan). Images from the camera together with
operational information from the PLC can be monitored remotely
via the Internet on a monitoring station.
The primary aim of the control task is to maintain the
 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8 3

LEGENDS
pressure gauge
PLC HMI
thermometer
Pressurised air
safety valve
Cooling water
Exhaust gas
IPC RTD thermowell

Water distributor pressure probe

Hot water circilation electric pump

Can barrel HTTP
Server
water level meter

signal recorder
SCADA
Steam distributor
CCD camera
proportional valve

Exhaust water solenoid valve

Steam

Fig. 1. Horizontal autoclave.

temperature in the autoclave at a desired setpoint (121
C) through
regulating steam discharge from a boiler. Increasing steam
discharge increases the temperature and the pressure in the
autoclave. Cooling water is injected to reduce the internal tem-
perature if necessary. The accumulated pressure must be relieved
once the pressure exceeds the allowable strength of the autoclave.
This operation introduces process deviation in the point of view of
system control. The temperature control shall adapt to the process
deviation caused by occasional pressure relief. A temperature
transducer (SR301, Chancemore, Taiwan) and a pressure transducer
(CAU-T, Jin Zon, Taiwan) provide the PLC with process response
measurements for feedback controls while a thermometer and a
pressure meter for operator's observation.
2.3. Process control
The sterilisation process is operated in accordance with the
procedures described in Fig. 2. A complete sterilisation consists of
exhausting, heating, cooling, and draining processes. Heat transfer
within the autoclave has non-linear dynamics which cannot be
correctly described with deterministic models.
A new batch comes with cool foodstuffs and meanwhile,
ambient air intrudes into the autoclave during can loading. The
residing air hinders heat convection which will lead to cans un-
evenly heated and may result in incomplete sterilisation. This
problem is alleviated by expelling the air with continual steam
injection before the start of batch processing. The air exhausting

Setup condition
1. Exhaust gas temperature and time
2. Heating temperature, pressure and time
3. Sterilization temperature, pressure and No Sterilization
time (F0) (Temp, Pressure, Time)
4. Cooling temperature, pressure and time

Start Yes: Time > Set point

Close: Steam valve
Open: Cooling water valve &
Open: Exhaust gas valve & Pressurize vale
Steam valve

No Cooling
(Temp, Pressure, Time)
No Exhaust gas
(Temp, Time)
Yes: Temp. < Set point
Close: Pressurize valve &
Circulating pump
Yes: > Set point Open: Exhaust water valve &
Close: Exhaust gas valve Exhaust gas valve

No Heating No Drain water

(Temp, Time, Level) (Temp, Pressure, Level)

Yes: Temp. > Set point Yes: Pressure < Set point
Open: Circulating pump
END

Fig. 2. Flowchart of the sterilisation process.

Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
4 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8
procedure warms up the cans to a temperature close to the desired
sterilising temperature, and then the fuzzy control takes over
temperature regulation, as shown in Fig. 3. Well controlled small
temperature transition prevents the cans from thermal deforma-
tion. Steam condensate is collected and sprayed onto the cans. This
increases the efficiency of heat exchange as water has a heat
transfer coefficient larger than steam. Timing of sterilisation is
triggered once the temperature reaches 121.5
C. Afterwards, the
temperature is maintained within 121 ± 0.5
C for a period deter-
mined by the F0 value, calculated by Eq. (3), for proper sterilisation.
Once the sterilisation is finished, the system is forwarded to a
cooling procedure. The cooling procedure is operated in sequential
mode. The water valve is completely open to inject cooling water
into the autoclave, the exhaust water valve is regulated to discharge
unnecessary water, and the exhaust gas valve is regulated to reduce
the inner pressure.
The cooling procedure reduces the inner pressure of the auto-
clave when the sterilized cans are still at a high temperature and
with a high inner pressure. The cans may deform if cooling is not
well managed. A cooling phase starts at constant pressure with
decreasing temperature and then releases the pressure at constant
temperature. Water spray into the autoclave decreases the tem-
perature and injection of clean pressurised air maintains the
pressure. Once the temperature is lowered to the room tempera-
ture, the pressure is released gradually to the atmospheric level. A
sterilisation cycle is now considered complete.
3. Fuzzy logic control
3.1. Control system
The sterilisation process is designed as a combination of
sequential and closed-loop controls as shown in Fig. 3. In the
beginning, the steam valve is completely open to inject steam into
the autoclave to expel the residing air and to warm up the cans.
Once the temperature reaches 121.5
C, 0.5
C above Tref, system
operation is switched to the closed-loop control mode. This mode is
maintained for a period determined by the F0 index. The sterilising
temperature is controlled by fuzzy logic with a lookup table.
3.2. Fuzzy control
Fig. 4 shows the block diagram of the fuzzy control for regu-
lating the sterilisation process. The system error, e[k], is a crisp
input to the fuzzy controller. The output of the fuzzy controller, u[k],
is the opening of the steam valve.
The calculated error, e[k], belongs to a fuzzy set with a degree of
membership, mð,Þ, between 0 and 1. Each set is identified by a
descriptive label to facilitate the construction of a fuzzy association
memory (FAM) rule bank. These labels are decoded by substituting:
N for negative, P for positive, B for big, M for medium, S for small,
100%
warmup and gas exhausting
feedback temperature control
r e Fuzzy Logic
+ Control
-
Fig. 3. Complete sterilisation control system.
Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
and ZE for zero. Fig. 5 shows the five membership functions used to
fuzzify the two variables. Triangular membership functions were
chosen because of the efficiency in numerical computation.
The FAM rule bank defines fuzzy rules that map the fuzzy input
sets to the fuzzy output set. FAM rules represent logical ”if-then”
statements where the antecedent is the fuzzy input set, e[k], and
the consequence is the valve opening, u[k]. For this controller the
FAM rule bank can be conceptualised as a vector of input-output
associations. A total of 5 rules are shown in Table 1. The Mamdani
scheme is used to establish a fuzzy matrix equation R:
R ¼ ðNBe  NBu Þ∪ðNSe NSu Þ∪ðZEe  ZEu Þ∪ðPSe  PSu Þ∪ðPBe PBu Þ
(4)
The correlation-minimum inference method is used to obtain an
output fuzzy set, truncated by the degree of the input membership,
for each active FAM rule. The inferred result is passed to a centre
defuzzification algorithm, as:
Z
mR ðeÞede
u¼ Z (5)
mR ðeÞde
where mR(e) is the membership function. Here the truncated fuzzy
set membership functions are combined to form a single scalar
output, the crisp valve opening u[k], with membership functions
defined in Fig. 5 (b). In implementation, an input-output mapping
lookup table for the fuzzy control logic is coded into the PLC for
efficient, numerical computation.
4. System implementation and validation
4.1. System implementation
The fuzzy control strategy was implemented using the PLC
ladder diagram. The SCADA system monitors, calculates the F0
value, and controls the sterilisation process via the PLC through
RS232 serial communication.
The performance of the sterilisation system was validated with
1% (weight/volume, w/v) and 3% (w/v) corn starch (CH-20, Gred-
mann, Taiwan) solutions prepared at 60
C. The solutions were
filled into cans for sterilisation test and accordingly, their F0 values
were derived. The F0 values of corresponding temperatures were
calculated in advance and organized as a lookup table.
4.2. PLC implementation of the fuzzy control
Through RS232 serial communication, devices were manipu-
lated and process information was acquired. The Mamdani scheme,
Eq. (4), is explicitly written as a lookup table, as:
T switch
+
-
sign(•)
+ u y
Steam Valve Autoclave
-
 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8 5

FAM
Bank

r[k] e[k] Inference u[k] PLC Horizontal y[k]

Fuzzification Defuzzification Driver
+- Engine Autoclave

Temperature
Transducer

Fig. 4. Block diagram of the fuzzy temperature controller.

Table 2
Lookup table of control commands, u in mA, with valve opening scalings.

Scaling e (
C)

0.6 0.4 0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6

100% 4.0 7.0 8.0 12.0 16.0 17.0 20.0

50% 4.0 5.5 6.0 8.0 10.0 10.5 12.0
30% 4.0 4.9 5.2 6.4 7.6 7.9 8.8
20% 4.0 4.6 4.8 5.6 6.4 6.6 7.0

manipulations are tabulated in Table 2 and are implemented as a

lookup table in the PLC. Preparatory experiments show that
maintaining the sterilising temperature at 121.5 ± 0.5
C gives the
best performance. Thus, 121.5
C is used as the setpoint in the fuzzy
temperature control loop.

Fig. 5. Membership functions of the error variable e[k] and the controller output u[k].
4.3. On-line calculation of the F0 value

Table 1 Eq. (3) that calculates the F0 value is converted to a discrete form
FAM rule bank for the fuzzy sterilisation controller.
for PLC implementation, as:
Fuzzy set
X
n X
n
System error, e NB NS ZE PS PB F0 ¼ DFi ¼ 10ðTTref Þ=Z Dt (8)
Control command, u NB NS ZE PS PB
i¼1 i¼1
NB: negative big; NS: negative small; ZE: zero; PS: positive small; PB: positive big.
with T ¼ temperature of the canned foodstuff, Tref ¼ reference
temperature 121
C, the death rate characteristic Z ¼ 10
C, and Dt is
the time elapse between two calculations.
2 3 Inclusion of the heating time and the cooling time gives a
1:0 0:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
6 0:5 modified F0 (Simpson et al., 1993):
6 0:5 0:5 0:5 0 0 0 0 0 77
6 0 0:5 1:0 0:5 0:5 0:5 0 0 0 7  
6 7
R¼6 0 7 F0;setting ¼ max F0;heating ; 0:8F0;heating þ 0:2F0;cooling (9)
6 0 0 0 0:5 1:0 0:5 0 0 7 (6)
6 0 0 0 0:5 0:5 0:5 1:0 0:5 0 7
6 7
4 0 0 0 0 0 0:5 0:5 0:5 0:5 5 The SCADA system calculates the F0 value and updates the PLC
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0:5 1:0 control on line. Algorithm 1 describes the use of F0 in sterilisation
termination control. The temperature T is regulated by the fuzzy
The controller output can be approximated by: logic controller.

u0 ¼ e+R (7)
The lookup table gives a simple, efficient approach in the deri-
vation of controller output. The fuzzy controller has a control action
between 4 and 4 which is converted to 4e20 mA to drive the
steam proportional valve. To limit the maximum steam valve
opening, the derived fuzzy control command is scaled with a factor
before actuating the steam valve. Four scaling ratios, 100%, 50%, 30%
and 20%, were applied. Scaled resultants of fuzzy logic

Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
6 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8

Fig. 6. System responses of sterilising temperature controls with various valve opening scalings.

5. Results and discussion
5.1. Temperature control of sterilisation
Fig. 6 shows system responses of each scaling control. The
temperature setpoint is set at 105
C in the beginning of control and
then increased to 121.5
C at 600 s. This procedure allows the
autoclave to be filled with hot steam for warming up. Afterwards,
sterlisation at the nominal temperature proceeds in automatic
fuzzy control mode. A control starting with 100% valve opening,
arrives at the temperature setpoint quickly. While switching from
open-loop to fuzzy control, fluctuating control action is inevitable.
The 100% and the 50% scaling controls result in offset responses and
the other two have quite promising results. Hence the former two
controls are considered unacceptable because of offset responses
and bigger oscillating control actions. Valve openings scaled by 30%
or 20% maintain temperature error within ±0.5
C and have less
oscillating control actions in comparison with the former two. Such
an accuracy is relatively good as in commercial heating/cooling
applications an accuracy of 2e5% is considered acceptable (Delgado
et al., 2012). The 20% scaling incurs intolerable switching phe-
nomenon in valve opening. Hence, a valve opening scaling of 30% is
chosen in system implementation for the interest of successful
sterilisation, control performance, energy saving, and actuator
longevity.

Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
 C.-C. Chung et al. / Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food xxx (2015) 1e8
Table 3
F0 values by the off-line (Eq. (3)) and on-line (lookup table) methods and the cor-
responding steam consumptions.
Corn starch (CH-20) F0 (min) Steam (105 KJ)
Off-line On-line Off-line On-line
1% (w/v) 8.15 6.20 2.99 2.27
3% (w/v) 9.19 7.30 3.37 2.68
Fig. 7. Comparisons of sterilising times calculated by off-line Eq. (3) and by on-line
lookup table.
5.2. On-line calculation of F0 values
The ability of the on-line lookup table method as an alternative
to the traditional off-line equation, Eq. (3), for calculating the F0
value was validated by sterilising cans with corn starch (CH-20) of
1% (w/v) and 3% (w/v). The preheating temperature was set at
105
C, sterilising temperature at 121.5
C, stream pressure at 1.0
bar, and cooling time at 4 min. Fig. 7 illustrates that the two
methods do not have significant difference (p < 0.01) in between.
This means that the proposed study using the lookup table method
is feasible. In other words, the PLC-based online method calculated
the F0 value directly and efficiently and hence the quality of a batch
production can be assured.
5.3. Reliability of the on-line method
In this system, the sterilising time (F0 value) must be no less
than 6 minutes to reduce pathogenic micro-organisms and spoil-
ages to an acceptable level. The traditional off-line method, Eq. (3),
is the most popular F0 calculation engine used in commercial
sterilisers. Table 3 lists the demands of steam energy associated
with the two F0 calculation methods. In this system, the autoclave
consumes 16.7 kg/min of steam. The steam releases 2200 KJ/kg
when it condensates from 121
C. Hence in the case of 1% w/v corn
starch, the off-line F0 method took 8.15 min and 2.99  105 KJ to
complete a sterilisation batch. Clearly, the on-line method results in
smaller F0 values and therefore less steam consumptions. This is
arrived at as the on-line method calculates the F0 value in a direct
Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003
7
and efficient fashion. Any process deviation can be compensated
immediately. The reliability of using the on-line method in canned-
food sterilisation is assured by the duration of keeping the steri-
lising temperature at 121
C, as shown in Fig. 6. The results show
that the proposed on-line method can get a more accurate F0 value
and can save about 70000 KJ of steam energy in either corn starch
experiment. Less steam injection means less risk of over-
sterilisation.
6. Conclusions
This paper proposed a sterilisation control system which con-
sists of a sequential loop for quick heating up and a fuzzy logic
controller for precise temperature control. The developed control
scheme was implemented on a PLC which is supervised remotely
with a SCADA system. The fuzzy controller can maintain the steri-
lising temperature to an accuracy of ±0.5
C. The SCADA system
monitors the performance of the controller and the responses of
the sterilisation, and accordingly, calculates and updates the F0 on
line. In comparison with sterilisation using the traditional F0
calculation, the proposed system can complete a batch processing
with less time, less steam consumption, and less risk of over-ster-
ilisation. This sterilisation control system has been granted with an
invention patent I252386 in Taiwan.
Acknowledgement
This work was financially supported by the National Science
Council of Taiwan under the Grant No. NSC 89-2511-S-020-002.
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Please cite this article in press as: Chung, C.-C., et al., Fuzzy logic for accurate control of heating temperature and duration in canned food
sterilisation, Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eaef.2015.11.003