Electrical and Information Engineering Department, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.
KMF Concept Limited, Egbeda, Lagos State, Nigeria.
F1000Res. 2021 Aug 16;10:810. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.54463.2. eCollection 2021.
Acceptable food processing techniques require the removal of water contents from the crop or food sample without destroying the nutritional qualities of the food sample. This poses a strict requirement on the dehydrator or oven that will be used in the dehydrating techniques to have the ability to control both temperature and humidity of its drying chamber. : This work centres on how an autonomous multi-farm produce dehydrator that can also serve as an oven can be designed with a raspberry pi and a low-cost programmable logic controller (PLC). The dehydrator gives the users the flexibility to control both the drying chamber's temperature and humidity from its web interface via a mobile device or the dehydrator's HMI. Heat energy from the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) is used so that the dehydrator can be readily available for commercial or industrial use. The small electricity required to power the electronics devices is obtained from the hybrid power solution with an electric energy source from either the mains electricity supply or solar.. The design was tested by creating an operation profile from the proposed web application for the dehydrator. The operation trend was analysed from the web application's Trendlines page. The report showed that both the temperature and humidity of the dehydrator could be controlled, and access to historical operation data will give insight to the user on how to create a better operation profile. The setup described in this work, when implemented was able to produce a dehydrator/oven whose temperature and humidity can be perfectly controlled and its generated heat is evenly distributed in its drying chamber to ensure efficient and effective drying techniques use in crop preservation and food processing.
可接受的食品加工技术需要在不破坏食品样品营养质量的情况下从作物或食品样品中去除水分。这对将要在干燥技术中使用的干燥器或烤箱提出了严格的要求，要求其具有控制干燥室温度和湿度的能力。本工作集中研究如何设计一个自主的多农场农产品干燥器，该干燥器也可用作烤箱，其核心是使用树莓派和低成本可编程逻辑控制器 (PLC)。干燥器为用户提供了通过移动设备或干燥器的 HMI 从其网络界面控制干燥室温度和湿度的灵活性。液体石油气 (LPG) 的热能被利用，以便干燥器可以随时用于商业或工业用途。为电子设备供电所需的少量电力来自混合电源解决方案，其电能来自市电供应或太阳能。该设计通过为干燥器创建来自拟议网络应用程序的操作配置文件进行了测试。操作趋势从网络应用程序的趋势线页面进行了分析。报告表明，干燥器的温度和湿度都可以得到控制，并且访问历史操作数据将使用户深入了解如何创建更好的操作配置文件。本文所述的设置在实施后能够生产出一种干燥器/烤箱，其温度和湿度可以得到完美控制，其产生的热量在干燥室内均匀分布，以确保在作物保存和食品加工中使用高效有效的干燥技术。
