Optimization of Online Moisture Prediction Model for Paddy in Low-Temperature Circulating Heat Pump Drying System with Artificial Neural Network

The accurate prediction of moisture content is crucial for controlling the drying process of agricultural products. While existing studies on drying models often rely on laboratory-scale experiments with limited data, real-time and high-frequency data collection under industrial conditions remains underexplored. This study collected and constructed a multi-dimensional dataset using an industrial-grade data acquisition system specifically designed for heat pump low-temperature circulating dryers. An artificial neural network (ANN) prediction model for moisture content during the rice drying process was developed. To prevent model overfitting, K-fold cross-validation was utilized. The model's performance was evaluated using the mean squared error (MSE) and the coefficient of determination (R²), which also helped determine the preliminary structure of the ANN model. Bayesian regularization (trainbr) was then employed to train the network. Furthermore, optimization was conducted using neural network weights (RI) analysis and Sobol variance contribution analysis of the input variables to simplify the model structure and improve predictive performance. The experimental results showed that optimizing the model through RI sensitivity analysis simplified its topology to a 5-14-1 structure. The optimized model exhibited not only simplicity but also high prediction accuracy, achieving R² values of 0.969 and 0.966 for the training and testing sets, respectively, with MSEs of 5.6 × 10^-3 and 6.3 × 10^-3. Additionally, the residual errors followed a normal distribution, indicating that the predictions were reliable and realistic. Statistical tests such as <i>t</i>-tests, F-tests, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests revealed no significant differences between the predicted and actual values of rice moisture content, confirming the high consistency between them.