Sensorization of an electric dryer for Bombyx mori (L.) silken cocoons desiccation

Abstract

In past decades, it has become crucial to implement systems that can continuously monitor and collect data on agro-industrial processes to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of several tasks. In the current study, we propose a system based on the DHT22 sensor and the Arduino-Uno board for gathering data on air temperature and relative humidity to calculate water extraction during cocoon drying operations through the analysis of air absolute humidity. The systems underwent preliminary testing on a sample of Bombyx mori L. silk cocoons. The results achieved in the proposed work indicated good estimation accuracy for the extraction of water, reaching high values of determination coefficient R2 (0.945), when tested against the real water loss determined by manual weighting of cocoons.