A web based solar drying monitoring system.

Abstract

General overview of subject matter One most time consuming activity is monitoring drying of most of the important. Agricultural products, drying using solar is a renewable and environmentally friendly technology, it has been considered as an advancement of natural sun drying and it is a more efficient technique. of utilizing Solar energy. Most of the agricultural products are seasonal crops and get spoilt quickly due to failure to achieve moisture contents- that are required for proper storage. To make their usage efficient, they can be dried to a moisture content required and preserved so that they can be maintained over a long period. The natural drying process. has many drawbacks, such as- requiring more time large investment on space requirement and infrastructure for drying process and failure to achieve desired moisture contents which cannot be afforded by a middle-class farmer. The financial up gradation of a farmer, export 'firms and subsidiary farmers in developed countries is possible by providing the modern techniques that help; automate, enable user definition of the temperature and moisture content needed to be achieved at low cost units A web based solar drying monitoring project described a controlled environment which was suitable for the drying process within a closed chamber using -a microcontroller and monitoring of the process over the web. To start with, the sun rays Were used to internally heat the products to remove the water content within. Then the air was blown inside the chamber to maintain the humidity below a specified level using the exhaust fan. Microcontroller was used to control the functions of heating, blowing the air, controlling the speed of exhaust fan and giving time indication & maintain constant temperature throughout the chamber, the Ethernet shield caused the system (solar drying chamber) to act as a client that keeps pushing readings from the temperature/moisture sensor to the database over to the machine where WAMP was installed and where the web can be accessed using a router which -created a LAN for the network, After the completion of the drying process a buzzer was activated for a certain duration of seconds to indicate the end of the drying process and achieved moisture content. A text message was sent 10 the farmer through GSM to intimate him if he is not around. For users over the web interface, a notification was sent to show that moisture content has been achieved' The graphical analysis of temperature and moisture against the timestamp show how the parameters keep changing over the days and nights during the drying process. Brief findings and conclusions The temperature to be maintained -within the chamber depends on the initial the agricultural product and the effect of temperature. on the contents. The temperature and moisture content are dependent on the user requirement: Humidity gradient to remove the water content in the products was varied by varying the fan speed. It was thus observed that the temperature gradient plays an important role in. the initial period of the drying phase and the Humidity gradient. plays an important role. in the later part of the drying phase to retain the original flavor of the product and to avoid caramelization. The system can be made more economical by making a provision for drying variety of products in multiple units. This. arrangement can be made possible by using sensor networks for various solar. chamber dryers. To make it economically viable for fanners, an application. specific integrated circuit by embedding the digital circuit into chips can be produced on a large scale. Here remote monitoring of the dryers over the web interface can be done and notifications sent as per each dryer.