Evaluation of a cocoa dryer prototype using LabVIEW software and Arduino hardware

Abstract

In a country like Colombia, food drying plays an important role in the extension of technology so that farmers improve the quality of their productivity. The objective of this work is to develop a system for acquiring thermodynamic variables, to establish the energy efficiency of a product drying oven, specifically for cocoa beans using Arduino hardware and LabView software. This research begins by establishing the variables to be measured and recorded by the DHT11 sensors, such as temperature and humidity. These sensors are connected to an Arduino Uno board that has an Atmel microcontroller, which captures the information from each of these. An algorithm was also developed that captures the temperature and humidity data and sends it through the serial port to the LabView software, in which the visualization on the front panel and programming in the block diagram have been developed, being viewed from the HMI (Human Machine Interface). For the experimental tests, 3,309 grams of fermented cocoa beans were taken, and dried for 36 hours, removing a total mass of water of 1,650 grams. The results show an energy efficiency of 10.62%, concluding that the drying oven that takes advantage of the residual heat of an 18000 BTU condenser integrated with the proposed variable system is suitable for drying cocoa beans. Despite this efficiency being low, it meets the objective of removing moisture from them.