Solar Based Drying Unit Controller

Conversion of coconut shell to copra is one of the time and labour consuming post harvesting process in coconut industry. Conventionally this is done by exposing the coconut shell to open sun light. In addition it takes 3 to 4 days to dry the coconut shell for proper extraction of oil. In a pioneer work, on design and development of a suitable technology for coconut shell drying, a solar drier unit was developed with financial assistance Department of Science and Technology. The closed nature of drier unit increases humidity in the closed atmosphere in the initial stages of drying which if unmonitored spoils the quality of dried copra. Thus monitoring of temperature and RH% in the closed net is done manually and a door placed at the top of net is opened if RH% of the closed space goes above certain value.