Miller Magazine Issue: 130 October 2020

73 ARTICLE MILLER / OCtOber 2020 old or non-dependable. Those silos, however, are often located very near to the harvest fields. This means that the products can be stored right after harvest with mini- mal transportation overhead. TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS Wireless IoT technologies can make old silos usable and reliable again at a small fraction of the cost of reno- vating or, even worse, rebuilding them. At the same time, being wireless and highly scalable can easily cover large industrial installations as well. The advantages of wireless IoT solutions include: a. Zero wiring cost: More flexible, quicker, and cheaper installations. b. Distributed: Many remote facilities can be monito- red with minimal human visits resulting in higher moni- toring efficiency and less travel expenses and use of fuels. c. Scalability: The ability to cover facili- ties of any size, making it feasible even for small growers to upgrade their own silos, with a reasonable ROI. d. Decentralized operation: All the data are residing on the cloud, making them accessible from any location at any time. Another advantage of adopting IoT tech- nologies in general, is the organizational in- teroperability. Immutable data can be sha- red securely with other entities giving the ability to the growers to provide transpa- rency, increase trust and offer quality assu- rance for their products. This enables them to compete larger entities or participate in aggregated or cooperative schemes. Mature wireless IoT products offer solutions to upgrade an existing silo to a modern, “wireless smart silo”. Wireless solution applications include quality and pest treatment monito- ring, inventory monitoring and ma- nagement, automations and product conditioning, and safety alarms. Grain Quality & Pest Management Wireless sensors can transmit metrics such as CO2, O2, temperature and mo- isture from inside the product, real time. Those metrics as well as the combinati- ons of patterns of them are known for their relationship with stored grain qu- ality, the presence of pest populations and the development microflora which eventually leads to mold and toxins, hot spots, and even self-combustion . Wa- ter activity is one more valuable metric, that can be directly measured, and is of special importance when it comes to wheat tempering and flour production . Gas sensors operating like digital noses inside the product, can identify and transmit data at the very early stages of po- tentially spoiling conditions which can be a very powerful tool for growers and grain managers . In addition to qua- lity, pest elimination practices, such as heat and controlled atmosphere treatments as well as fumigations with certified chemical gases are used to prolong storage time and secure grains from spoilage. Having gas-tight, wireless sensors insi- de high-temperature or corrosive chemicals raises a several engineering challenges. Luckily, those have been successfully addressed by today’s commercial solutions. INVENTORY MONITORING Keeping an eye on the quantity your stored grains and any other commodity being kept in a silo, is a powerful Picture 1. The wireless silo(s) architecture: A combination of hardware, sensing, and cloud analytics available for opti- mal grain management and food traceability. Picture 2. A technician installing wireless sensors inside a steel silo to monitor stored grain quality and cognitive pest treatments.