Smartphone Application Using a Visual Programming Language to Compute Drying/Solar Drying Characteristics of Agricultural Products

Abstract

Drying is an important process for food security. A software application on a smartphone can be used to prevent mistakes while carrying out the calculations for drying investigation and research using several mathematical equations. The objective of this research was to develop a software program on cellphones depending on some of the important mathematical equations which are used to conduct some of the drying/solar drying characteristics to assist researchers and engineers who work in the food engineering field for sustainable development. This innovative software application can be installed on mobiles in Android and iOS systems to save effort and time. Mathematical models were developed to compute drying/solar drying calculations. These mathematical models were integrated into the flowchart to develop a software program using visual programming language in the operating system and create the user interface. The collected data from references were used to compare the results from the normal way of calculations with results from the developed software. The results were agreed for both normal calculations and the software. This application software can calculate the moisture content of product, drying ratio, quantity of removed moisture from the fresh products, required heat to evaporate moisture from fresh product, and efficiency of the solar collector.