Development Of An Automation System For Nutrient Film Technique .

Advances in Engineering Research, volume 207Proceedings of the 2nd International Seminar of Science and Applied Technology (ISSAT 2021)Development of an Automation System forNutrient Film Technique Hydroponic EnvironmentC. Bambang Dwi Kuncoro1,* Moch Bilal Zaenal Asyikin1, Aurelia Amaris21Department of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Energy Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology,Taichung 41170, Taiwan2Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang 65145,Indonesia*Corresponding author. Email: bkuncoro@ncut.edu.twABSTRACTHydroponic is one of the plant cultivation systems known for its high-quality products. The growth of the plant dependson the composition of nutrient solution and the plant environment. Due to its nutrient absorption process, nutrientsolution composition continuously varies in the Hydroponics nutrient solution irrigation system. An automation systemis necessary to control and monitor the composition of nutrient solutions. This paper presents the development of anautomation system for nutrient film technique (NFT) Hydroponic system. The proposed system control and monitorthe pH level, Electrical conductivity (EC), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), water temperature, water flow rate, and waterlevel of the nutrient solution in the Hydroponics nutrient solution irrigation system suited for a specific plant. The mainsystem is composed of sensors, microcontrollers, actuators, and data loggers. It was verified by the testing of sensorsand actuators functionality, and also a field experiment. The experiment result revealed that the developed systemworks properly to monitor and control the environment nutrient solution parameters of Hydroponic. The fieldexperiment also shows that the vegetable plant sample grew well during cultivation and showed good quality cropyield with a harvest-time is of around 3.5 weeks.Keywords: Hydroponic, Automatic, Harvest-time, Nutrient sensor, NFT.1. INTRODUCTIONNowadays, the agriculture industry is characterizedby its technological advance and capital-intensive. It hasachieved great growth both in quantity and quality andhas become a considerable industry with a big potentialmarket both in domestic and overseas demands [1].One of the plant production systems known for itshigh-quality products is Hydroponic system. Hydroponicis a type of hydro-culture plant cultivation. It cultivatesthe plant with less soil and uses mineral nutrient solutionin water [2 - 4]. The plants grow with their roots either innutrient solution or in an inert medium (gravel, perlite, ormineral wool). There are six types of hydroponicsystems, namely nutrient film technique (NFT), dripsystem, water culture, ebb & flow, geoponics, and wick.Water/moisture, nutrients, and Oxygen are the commonparameters needed by plant roots. The six types ofHydroponic system differ from each other based on howthey deliver these basic parameters needed by the plantto grow. The parameters to be considered in aHydroponics system are the nutrient solution, pH of thenutrient solution, electrical conductivity (EC) of thenutrient solution, the temperature of the solution,dissolved oxygen (DO) of the solution, and airtemperature [5 - 7].Since the plant quality and harvest-time becomeimportant issues in optimizing productivity [8, 9], areliable and precise environment control system ofHydroponic is critical to achieving this goal. TheHydroponics environmental control system has tomonitor and control the nutrient solution variables (pH,electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, andtemperature) accurately [6]. Today’s embedded systemand digital controls are becoming more common incontrolling and monitoring Hydroponics operations. Itsubstitutes many independent sensors and controllers thatfrequently work against each other and inflates theoperational cost. A farmer can set all growth parametersusing the automated system device according to the plantneeded going to grow. Therefore, the hydroponic systemcan be executed efficiently and timely. Thus, the resultis better quality plants with less cost, effort, and timeconsuming [9, 10].Copyright 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V.This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license 7

Advances in Engineering Research, volume 207This paper aims to describe the development of anautomated system that is capable to control and monitorthe nutrient solution variables (pH, electricalconductivity, dissolved oxygen water temperature, waterflow, and water level) during the whole cycle of the NFTHydroponic system.2. MATERIALS AND METHODSand monitoring system platform for water cultureHydroponic cultivation. It is namely onsite terminal asshown in Figure 2.The general objective of this research is to design adevice that will mix automatically the nutrient solution toachieve a balanced hydroponics system. While the watertemperature, pH level, EC level, DO percentage, waterflow, and water level are the targeted parameters to bemonitored and controlled.2.1. HydroponicsHydroponics is the concept of soil less gardening. Itis a method of growing plants in water with the needednutrients. In this way, water must be delivered directly tothe roots of the cultured plants. The plants that grow withthe roots are slightly soaked in the nutrient solution [11 13]. There are different techniques on how to deliverwater to the roots. One of these is the nutrient filmtechnique system. In this method, water is continuouslychannelled within a tray. With this system, water can betypically recycled. Using Hydroponics, the growth rate ofthe plant is 30- 50 percent faster than soil plants. Thismethod can also help plants get the nutrients neededwithout searching unlike in soil gardening. Hydroponicgardening uses less water than soil gardening becausewater can be recycled [14, 15].The NFT system is basically popular for homehydroponic plants such as lettuce, tomatoes, peppers,cucumber, some herbs, etc. This is because of its simpleorientation as shown in Figure 1. Therefore, NFT systemsare most commonly used for quick-growing small plants.Figure 2 Architecture of SmartHydroFarm systems.The block diagram of the Hydroponic control andmonitoring system is shown in Figure 3. pH level,electrical conductivity level, water temperature, andwater level are monitored using a pH sensor, EC sensor,water temperature sensor, and water level sensorrespectively placed on the mixing tank. The pH sensorautomatically adjusts the acidity and basicity of thebalanced nutrient solution according to the plant’s pHneed. While the EC sensor will adjust automatically theamount of nutrients are needed by the crop. The pHsensor and EC sensor adjust the pH and amount ofnutrients the plant needed by activating the nutrientpumps.Figure 1 The NFT Hydroponic system.The parameters to be considered in a hydroponicssystem are the nutrient solution, the nutrient solution pH,the nutrient solution EC, the solution temperature, airtemperature, and Oxygen concentration [16, 17].2.2. System DesignFigure 3 Block diagram of Hydroponic control &monitoring system.The proposed system is a part of theSmartHydroFarm system that is an automatic controlling438

Advances in Engineering Research, volume 207The system also controls the water temperature anddissolved oxygen level of the nutrient solution. The watertemperature sensor and DO sensor on the mixing tank areused for the activation of the oxygen pump. While thewater flow sensor is placed on the growing tray to knowthe water flow speed in the growing tray, and the waterlevel sensor on the mixing tank to control the level of thenutrient solution in the mixing tank. A touch screen LCDis incorporated into the system to display monitorednutrient environment variables, and to manually encodethe pH, EC, DO, and water temperature needs of the cropto be planted on the hydroponic system. All monitorednutrient environment variables also are recorded in aMicroSD card by the data logger module.significant figures (XX.XX mg/L)accuracy and 5V DCoperating voltage.The proposed algorithm for Hydroponic control andmonitoring system is described as follows:1 : select the hydroponic nutrient environment2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9:10 :parameters control modes either manual orautomatic,turn on the water pump,read the hydroponic nutrient environmentparameters,display the actual Hydroponic nutrientenvironment parameters on LCD,record the actual Hydroponic nutrientenvironment parameters in data logger,compare between the hydroponic nutrientenvironment parameters set-point and actualparameters (sensors reading),if the parameters don’t match, modifying theEC, DO, pH, water temperature, and water levelof the nutrient solution by controlling the airpump, nutrient pump, and solenoid valve,control water flow,loop back to step 3,else stop control action.3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION3.1. System ImplementationThe developed system was built according to theblock diagram in Fig 3. The system is composed ofsensors, microcontrollers, actuators, LCD, data logger,and power supply as shown in the integration of thecomponent system in Fig 4.The pH sensor, EC sensor, and DO sensor from AtlasScientific are chosen to measure pH level, electricalconductivity level, and dissolved oxygen levelrespectively. The pH sensor has 0.1 pH (25 )accuracy, 0–14 pH measuring range, and 5V DCoperating voltage. The EC sensor has also 5V DCoperating voltage, 10% F.S accuracy, 1- 20ms/cmmeasuring range, and 5–40 operating temperature.While DO sensor has 0–20 mg/L measuring range,50 max probe temperature, 690 kPa (100PSI) maxprobe working pressure, 0.1full range DO readings, twoFigure 4 The integration of sensors and actuators.DS18B20 temperature sensor (waterproof) fromDallas Semiconductor is used to measure the watertemperature. The sensor has-55 C to 125 C temperaturerange, 3.0–5.5V input voltage, 0.5 C accuracy from 10 C to 85 C, and 1 Wire interfaceThe nutrient solution flow rate circulation ismeasured by a hall-effect water flow sensor modelFS200A. It has 4.5–24V DC working voltage, 0–1.2Mpaworking pressure, 0.5–30L/min flow range, and1%accuracy.The water level sensor from Funduino is chosen tomeasure the level of nutrient solution in the mixing tank.It has 5V DC working voltage, 20mA working current,10–30 working temperature, low power consumption,high sensitivity, and 0–4.2V DC output voltage signal.The processing unit uses Arduino Mega 2560.Themodule applied the ATmega2560 chip, which has 54digital I/O pins (15 pins can be used as PWM outputs),16 analogue inputs, 4 UARTs, a 16 MHz crystaloscillator, a USB connection, and an ICSP header.The data logger module from Deek robot is used forthe data logging and storage. It has an SD card interfacefor either FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards, a 3.3V levelshifter circuitry that prevents damage to the SD card, areal-time clock (RTC), and a battery backup that lasts foryears.A 3.6” TFT LCD is used to display the result of dataprocessing by a microcontroller. It has a colorarrangement: RGB Stripe, 65K color with 320 240resolutions. The controller of this LCD module isSSD1289; it supports a 16-bit data interface with a 4 wirecontrol interface. This module includes the touch screenand SD card socket.The nutrient circulation in the growing tray and thesupply water in the mixing tank is controlled by a miniwater pump and solenoid valve. The mini water pump has439