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The Hilgard Project

The Hilgard Project

The Wired Winery

The Hilgard Project in the Department of Viticulture and Enology University of California, Davis “A measurement and control system that follows the development of our grapes to the making of our wines”

Summary

The Hilgard Project is the application of an advanced measurement and control system and an efficient historical archive database to the measurement of research, teaching and management properties in the vineyards and wineries of the Department of Viticulture and Enology, at the University of California, Davis. The system is named in honor of Eugene Hilgard, the first professor of Viticulture and the founding Dean of Agriculture at the University of California, Berkeley. Hilgard’s research ranged from the evaluation of grape cultivars in various regions of the State to the first scientific studies of wine color and tannin levels (see Hilgardnote.htm, some references below). He personified the development of the sciences of Viticulture and Enology more than 100 years ago, and this unique data acquisition, control and archive system that covers events from our vineyards and our wineries, displays the breadth of his research interests. The system has been made possible by the generous gifts of software from OSI Systems and hardware from Emerson Process Management. There are many people who have contributed during the past year of planning and installation, but those whose foresight led to the first contact and meetings have been critical to its completion. The present system involves the world’s first online wine fermentation measurements and automated pumpovers in our Teaching Winery and the logging of climatic and some experimental data from our Oakville vineyards. Future plans include the establishment of an extensively instrumented reference vine at Oakville, (known as the Wired Vine), the gathering of data from all vineyard experiments, the weather stations and the measurement of irrigation system performance, from all of our vineyards (the two at Oakville, Davis and Kearney). At Davis, the advanced control of the continuous distilling column is being planned in our Teaching Winery.

The History of The Hilgard Project

The original ideas for this project evolved out of a series of meetings that involved Candice Keyes, Andrew Wilson, Don Smith and Roger Boulton at Davis in August 2001. The earliest discussions focused on how measurements of fermentations and other winemaking events could be captured and stored in their simplest form as raw data, used for control algorithms and modeling and kept for future teaching and research use. The special features of the OSI PI software combine and integrate the measurement, control and archive functions that are usually performed by different software packages. The extension of the scope to include a wired reference vine and the retrieval of weather information soon followed. This quickly expanded into the possible control and monitoring of water use in all vineyards and the transfer of experimental data back to Davis from the Oakville Experiment Station. The existing CIMIS (California, Irrigation Management Information System) and Adcon weather stations at present send our data to remote sites and the need for more efficient water use and accountability in vineyards is obvious, so these soon became subprojects in themselves. The OSI PI system was installed in November 2001 and the planning of the installation of the Emerson Process Management Delta-V instrumentation and control system was set for September 2002.

The System Today

An Emerson DeltaV digital automation system, running with an on-board PI system and utilizing the latest Foundation Fieldbus instrumentation from Emerson Process Management's Rosemount Measurement Division is presently installed in the Teaching Winery. The focus in this first stage has been on the establishment of measurements rather than on the control applications (for an example, see http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/winery/temp.htm). Recent developments have transfer the control of cooling or heating fluids to the fermentor jackets and the automated pump-over or mixing operations for each fermentor. The pumpover rate and frequency can be varied from continuous to any combination of time and rate. Future projects will install an in-line UV-Vis-NIR spectrometer to measure the extraction of color, tannin and total phenolics during red wine fermentations and the in-line measurement of yeast cell mass for white wines. The measurement of fermentation progress uses two alternative approaches from the measurements of weight loss using a pressure transducer, pioneered at UC Davis by Kelly Wheat’s MS thesis project, and a new osmotic pressure sensor that has been developed in Australia, by Psitech. In addition the carbon dioxide levels in the winery are measured using a Rosemount BINOS analyzer and the temperatures within and outside the winery are also recorded. The PI server located in Wickson Hall, can be accessed by students, researchers and interested individuals to follow the fermentation progress of most of the wines made in the Teaching Winery during the 2002 harvest. These measurements can be further analyzed using a Visual Basic Applications (VBA) implementation of existing wine fermentation models that provides parameter estimation and interpretation. These developments for the PI system were undertaken by Nuno Elias during his Fulbright fellowship period in Davis. These fermentation results and predictions, as well as the ambient conditions in the winery, can be displayed using the Process Book software and accessed from anywhere in the world via the world-wide web.

The Future Hilgard System

The future systems will provide a data backbone for the entire Department’s teaching and research activities. This will conceptually include the data gathering of all research and teaching experiments, wherever they are located, and presenting them to end users through the web-site. The compilation of sensory scores from a VEN 125 classes of 50 students, or a winemaker tasting of 100 people, are examples that has not yet been mentioned. Others would include the water use of the new facilities in the Robert Mondavi Institute, the management of adjacent greenhouses as well as all control functions of the new winery complex. The gradual extension to these new applications will be stage-wise, often being a mixture of a research project that then becomes a teaching or management tool. They will generally be limited by funding and there is an ongoing need for financial support that will address these future connections. The connection of the control of the outside air fans based on the levels of carbon dioxide in the winery, or based on the difference between the outside and inside temperatures has yet to be completed.

The Founding Contributors

The Hilgard Project would not have been possible without the foresight and commitment to education that is shared and displayed by the following individuals and companies. The ability to accept and implement the initial stages during the 2002 harvest has been made possible by the generous pro bono work of Andrew Wilson and funds of the Stephen Sinclair Scott Endowment.

The People Behind the Ideas

Candice Keyes
PI applications specialist OSI software

Don Smith
PI system specialist OSI software

Bud Keyes
Senior Vice President EMERSON process management and President Rosemount Analytical

Andrew Wilson
Process Systems Inc

Roger Boulton
Stephen Sinclair Scott Professor of Enology And Chemical Engineering
DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE AND ENOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

The People Behind the Installation

Andrew Wilson
Process Systems Inc

Owen Le Gare
IT System specialist
DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE AND ENOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

James Wong
PI Specialist OSI Software

Don White
Vice President Sales and Service Associated Process Controls

Jeremy Brack
Systems Engineer Associated Process Controls

Kelly Wheat
Innovative Winery Solutions http://www.winerysolutions.com

Nuno Elias
Fulbright scholar
DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE AND ENOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

Ernie Farinias
Winery Manger - RET
DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE AND ENOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

Roger Boulton
Stephen Sinclair Scott Professor of Enology and Chemical Engineering
DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE AND ENOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
The Plans For The Near Future

The Control of all Batch and Continuous Distilling operations The control of the irrigation pump stations in all vineyards. Logging of the CIMIS and Adcon weather station data and the installation of a “Wired Reference Vine” at the Oakville Experiment Station. The data logging and control of all vineyard research experiments at the Oakville, Davis and Kearney Vineyards.

The Future of The Hilgard Project in the Robert Mondavi Institute

All Fermentations in the Teaching and Research facilities, Refrigeration, Ventilation, Humidification, Process Water and Electrical systems All activities in the Research Winery, the measurement and control of pump-overs and mixing of all 100 small lot fermentations, the Cleaning-in-Place and Process Water systems and the control of fresh air and Humidity in the Barrel Aging Rooms. All batch and continuous distillation systems and control of the Green House

How to Become a Contributing Partner

This project continues to evolve into the full research measurement and teaching tool that is described above. There are several aspects which remain to be completed primarily due to the funds available. If you or your company wishes to become a partner of this important project, please contact one of the people below for details on how you can become a contributing partner.

Contact Information

James Wolpert jawolpert@ucdavis.edu 530 752-0380

Roger Boulton rbboulton@ucdavis.edu 530 752-0900

 

Further Readings

Hilgard, E. W. (1886). Colorimetric measurement of wines. Univ. Calif. Agric. Expt. Stn. Bull. 60.

Hilgard, E. W. (1887a). Experiments on methods of fermentation. Univ. Calif. Agric. Expt. Stn. Bull. 63.

Hilgard, E. W. (1887b). The extraction of color and tannin during red-wine fermentations. Univ. Calif. Agric. Expt. Stn. Bull. 77.