Objective: 

After doing technical changes in the sensors and heater. I have decided to take trials on a different substrate. I chose water, sawdust and water mixture onion, and potato, as a substrate. I chose water for first because the molucular bond of water can be seperated easily when we start to heat it and I will the linear drying curves.

Procedure:

  • Firstly I turned on the drying apparatus.
  • Then I set the temperature to 75-degree Celsius. The temperature varied as per trial because some substrate took less time to dehydrate some took more time.
  • I added the substrate to the drying apparatus.
  • I close the drying apparatus and checked after every 6 hours is substrate is dried or not.
  • The 1st trial was water trial, 2nd was sawdust trial, 3rd and 4th was onion trial, 5th was of potato and 6th is sawdust trial.
fig1. onion after drying
fig2. Potato after drying

Conclusion:

I found that water and mixture of sawdust and water can easily give the drying curves but the molecular bond in onion and potato is not easy to break and it took more time to dry.

Another observation is it was not easy to analyse data of potato and onion to draw drying curves because its drying is not linear.

Next Plan: 

Planned to do a trials on a different substrate and different temperature to create their SOP by analyzing data coming from these trials and conduct the next trials.