Desenvolvimento de um secador de bancada em ciclo fechado com controle de temperatura do ar de secagem

Abstract

This work aimed to build an automated bench dryer with air temperature drying control. The structural part of the dryer was built using stainless steel sheets and parts made in a 3D printer, and the electrical part was made using Arduino, temperature and humidity sensors, load cell, solid state relays and a hair dryer that was modified. To control the dryer, a code was written in Arduino's C++ language that simulates a PID controller. In order for the end user to be able to control the dryer in an improved way, a graphical interface was made in Python language, which can plot the graphs of the temperature, humidity and load cell mass sensors in real time, in addition to allowing full control of the dryer, with options to turn the control on and off, change the PID parameters during the drying process, generate drying data based on the number of points entered, and several other functions. At the end of construction, some drying tests were carried out using corn grains in order to test the dryer's efficiency. Despite some minor problems, the results were very promising, since the dryer was able to perform all programmed functions and considerably reduced grain moisture. The main problems found were in the part of the dryer's electronics, more specifically in the load cell, as the measured value fluctuates with temperature variation.