An optimized honey dehydration system with drying air temperature and relative humidity control

Abstract

This paper presents a system that can reduce the water percentage of stingless bee honey with a microcontroller to control the drying process employing temperature, drying air speed, relative humidity, and optimized honey exposure surface. The main objective is to reduce water content in stingless bee honey at 22 % in order to prevent rapid fermentation and delay crystallization. This water reduction process is important to preserve the quality and extend the storage period of honey. The system comprises of a programmed microcontroller, a main insulated container, a 12 V and 400 ml/min peristaltic pump, a 2800 Watt hair dryer, a temperature and relative humidity sensor, an exhaust fan, a relative humidity control system made of a smaller insulated container and a thermoelectric Peltier cooler module, a perforated stainless steel tray, and a switching circuit / a controller circuit. In this system, the temperature control was achieved using an on-off controller. The results showed that stingless bee honey samples between 2 and 8 kg was processed, where the percentage of water dropped from between 29 - 28 % to 21.2% with dehydration rate of 53.39 g/h.