Design and Development of Solar Powered Automatic Grain Dryer for Storage

This paper presents the design and development of an automatic solar powered grain dryer used to remove the moisture content from grains, post harvesting. The drying is achieved by allowing the heat from heat chamber to flow on to the conveyor belt with the help of exhaust fans present in the heat chamber. The grains are layered evenly on the conveyer belts upon which the heated air is passed to extract the moisture from the grains. Arduino Uno (ATmega328P) along with the appropriate sensors are used to monitor and control the moisture content, speed of the motor and temperature of the heating chamber. Based on the moisture content present in the grains, the sensor sends the control signal to the controller. Thus, the speed of the conveyer belt is adjusted accordingly to maintain required moisture content in the grains, which is ideally required for storage. The prototype of the system is developed and powered using solar photovoltaic energy generated from 10W solar panel in conjunction with buck-boost converter and charge controller. The results shows a good response in removing the initial moisture content from 30% to 14% from the grains without altering their nutrition values.