Pre-Intro

The increase in the world’s population and its rampant growth has increased the need for food in an uncontrollable way and has necessitated the expansion of industries, especially food industries. Food dehydration is one of the most used processes in the food industry, whether natural or processed food for consumption in direct way or use as an input for other industries processes. Today, dehydration of foods is being done widely and on an industrial scale in developed countries. Among the challenges in this field in the world, are problems with consumers and industry grade standards which conventional devices cannot pass. Another problem is that the output of these devices cannot receive food standard certifications from food laboratories. The process of dehydrating food can be very sensitive depending on the type of food and the physical and chemical characteristics of that material and should be carried out under controlled and managed conditions with high sensitivity. Quality is defined by characteristics that meet the needs of customers. These characteristics can be related to human senses, nutritional content of products, physical properties of products, level of microbiological contamination in products and shelf life, etc. For example, sudden changes in temperature during dehydration of banana slices can lead to color change and loss of quality of the dehydrated fruit at the end of the product dehydrating process. Also, the dehydrating process should be done in specific steps and away from unwanted gases such as (carbon monoxide, methane, etc.) to avoid unwanted chemical reactions and effects on the final product as much as possible. Another important parameter in the dehydrating process is energy consumption management. Considering that the food dehydrating process requires heat generators, which mainly have low efficiency in electric models and high heat loss in gas models, online control, monitoring and management of energy consumption parameters and consumer synchronization With the data received from energy monitoring sensors, it can have a tremendous effect on the amount of energy consumed by the device and reduce its running costs. Also, creating an energy consumption management tool that has the ability to control real time by the user, but its changes have the least effect on the quality of the final product, is another factor that can lead to an increase in the overall efficiency of a dehydrator.

DryZero room-class dehydrator

DryZero fully automatic room-class dehydrator is a product of Tosee Pouyane Arvand Company, the first version of which was designed and built in 2014. This dehydrator is designed and built with three energy sources: electrical-source, gas-source and hybrid-source (combination of electrical and gas sources). Among the features of DryZero room-class dehydrator, we can mention the high power of dehydrating the product, the ability to discharge high humidity and the ability to choose from among the suggested settings for dehydrating the product from the control panel menus.

DryZero hot air dehydrators for fruits, dehydrated fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants are designed and manufactured with the aim of providing a solution to the problem of the quality of the final product in the dehydrating process in hot air dehydrating for fruits, deydrated fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants. In this system, to solve the above problem, the localized HMI industrial user interface is used to simplify the dehydration process. The use of accurate data extraction equipment, the ability to manage energy consumption, the ability to be controlled by a mobile phone application based on IOT, the ability to provide suggested settings to help beginner users, the ability to provide updates for the settings and software database, the use of system safety monitoring equipment, industrial design Programming algorithms, the use of a combination of microcontroller and microprocessor with multi-threaded processing and correcting possible errors, dehydrating the product with the lowest amount of radiation and conduction with the aim of uniformity of the dehydration process, the ability to adjust the volume of circulating air in the dehydration chamber are among the features.

Product features

• Adjust the volume of circulating air in the dehydration chamber by the user
• Dehydrating the product without using direct heat (radiation or conduction) with the aim of making the dehydrating process more uniform and increasing the quality of the product
• Providing four selectable modes “ultra low consumption”, “low consumption”, “ideal” and “high power” to control the speed and energy consumption of the product dehydration process
• Monitor and control the system using Internet of Things protocols and the Farmino Android application
• Preventing the entry of methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and moisture caused by ignition by using convection heat transfer
• Creating a user interface with multi-language menus, with touch screen to make it easier for the user to work with the device.
• Using digital ambient temperature sensors with a measurement accuracy of 0.06 degrees Celsius and an error of 0.5 degrees to optimize the control power of the device.
• Using relative humidity sensors of the digital environment with an accuracy of 0.5% of relative humidity and an error of +-1% to increase the accuracy of the device in controlling the dehydrating process of the product.
• Using safety sensors for methane gas and carbon monoxide gas to monitor real-time gas leakage or incomplete fuel with the aim of increasing the safety of the system and minimizing the entry of unwanted gases into the dehydration chamber.
• Using K-type thermocouple sensors to measure and monitor the flame temperature and the temperature of the electric heat generator box with the aim of increasing the safety of the system.
• Using a fluid temperature sensor to accurately control the temperature of the intermediate fluid, prevent unwanted temperature increase due to gas pressure fluctuations, and increase system safety.
• The ability to continue the process of product dehydration after a power shortage using software methods
• Using voltage and current consumption sensors to calculate real-time power consumption and automatically adjust the maximum permissible power consumption based on the current capacity of the power grid
• Applying the code error correction system (ECC) during the transfer of sensor data by the two-way management of microcontroller-microprocessor with the aim of reducing errors in system data input.
• The ability to save the last product dehydrating settings for ease of applying the same settings in future uses
• The ability to provide recommended product dehydration settings (including parameters of maximum temperature, minimum temperature, chamber humidity and dehydration time) using an updatable database on the Internet and using Internet of Things communication protocols
• Update system software online and by providing software patches on the server