Implementation of Automatic In-store Dryer for Improving Agriculture Product

Abstract

The post-harvest agricultural products handling is important to improve quality and to reduce yield loss Shallot is one of perishable agricultural commodities. Inappropriate post-harvest handling of onion can causes loss in weight, damage bulbs because of rotten, moldy, and new shoots grow. The traditional process of drying agricultural commodities can takes around 7-9 days under direct sunlight and 3-4 weeks depending on weather conditions when restore in the drying room. This causes more time for post-harvest processing and farmers to be needed. The installation of the automatic instore dryer provides a solution where the drying time is less than a week with the level of humidity and temperature are based to the target set point and not too dependent on outdoor weather. While temperature conditions under regulated temperature, the heating process uses light bulb while the air circulation inside the instore is using the exhaust. The output signal of the controller will activate the incandescent and exhaust lights based on the difference between the sensing temperature and humidity sensors installed in the room and set point.

Untitled

“…The temperature and humidity in the drying process must meet the drying criteria to produce a quality product. Several researchers have made a drying system based on a microcontroller so that drying can be done automatically [5,6]. The drying technology used in this research is the Hohenheim type tunnel dryer modified.…”