Diseño y construcción de un prototipo electrónico deshidratador de frutos para pequeños productores.

Abstract

A fruit dehydrator prototype was designed and built for small-scale producers. It consists of four stages; the first stage, parameters acquisition, primarily functions to obtain the dehydration parameters stored in a database; these parameters will be sent to the ESP32 development board; the second stage is the action stage, where instructions are received from the development board to activate the heater and fans of the device, the third stage is the sensors and control, which allows monitoring the temperature and relative humidity variables; finally, the information visualization stage allows interaction with the prototype and monitoring of the mentioned parameters inside the dehydration chamber, as well as remote monitoring through a mobile application. From the tests conducted on the temperature and relative humidity sensors, relative percentage errors of 4.46% and4.08% were obtained, Establishing that the results obtained are "good." Through tests conducted on fruits regarding water activity, it was determined that the fruits were within the acceptable range for dehydrated products, which is 0.4 < αw < 0.6. According to experts in the field of food, it was determined that the performance and usability of the device were 4.51, which indicates that it is between "good" and "very good." on the other hand, in the quality test of the dehydrated fruit it was determined that the quality of the fruit is "excellent," with an acceptability rating of 4.67 this due to its organoleptic characteristics being superior to those of products marketed in the area. The analysis concluded that the developed prototype has superior characteristics compared to similar commercial equipment. It is recommended that the processing capacity of the device be improved and the prototype industrialized, thereby improving its structure and capability.