DEVELOPMENT OF AN ADVANCED CANE LOSS MONITORING SYSTEM

The loss of billets during the harvesting process is estimated to cost the industry $50 million per year. Careful control of the extractor fan speed is required to achieve a balance between excessive trash in the cane supply, and the ejection of cane billets. To achieve this control, cane loss must be measured in real time. This can be achieved by detecting the vibrations produced by billet impacts on the blades of the primary extractor fan. This approach makes use of an acoustic transducer coupled from the moving blades to the stationary frame. These signals are collected and analysed online to give a measurement of cane loss. Field trials of this detection process have been successfully conducted on a cane harvester in Mackay. Samples of the raw and of the conditioned signals are presented here, and an indicative relationship between fan speed and cane loss is demonstrated.