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    Design of a laboratory-scale sugarcane weighing system
    Recently, sugarcane harvesters have been increasingly used in sugarcane harvesting. Loading trucks were traveling along the harvesters to collect the harvested cane billets. Since cane harvesters are expensive machines, there is an idea of collaborative farming by combining multiple fields from different owners to reduce operating costs and time. However, it is difficult to fairly classify yields from different fields. Site-specific yield monitoring system is not common in typical harvesters. Farmers only know the weight on each truck without its collecting location when selling the sugarcane to the factory. This research was the feasibility study to develop a hydraulic weighing system in laboratory scale for further applying to the side-tipping loading trucks. A low-cost hydraulic weighing system was fabricated. A microcontroller was used to read signals from pressure and gyroscopic sensors and then to calculate the applied load. Accuracy and precision of the system were examined. The coefficient of determination (R<sup>2</sup>) of the relationship between the actual and determined loads was 0.978. The standard error of prediction (SEP) of the system was 2.348 kg. The results show that there was feasibility to apply the system on farm scale; however, further study with a larger scale should be conducted.
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    Item type:Publication,
    Develop the Precise Vacuum Seeder for Nursery Plug Tray Sowing by Using the Vacuum Cleaner
    The manual sowing of vegetable seeds is the general practice of vegetable nurseries in Thailand. It is the slow and labour-intensive process that causes the low production capacity. This study aims to design and develop a vegetable seed sowing machine for 200-cell plug tray plantings to substitute human labor. The prototype utilizes the vacuum cleaner to develop the suction head pressure that simultaneously offers the 200 seeds-planting per tray. The vacuum seeder mechanism is composed of the suction head unit and seeds tray unit. The prototype is operated and controlled by the automation system for continuous planting. Cantonese vegetable seed is selected to evaluate the planting precision of the prototype. Based on the design parameters obtained in laboratory experiments, the optimal condition for planting the Cantonese vegetable seeds in the 200-cell plug tray is verified by adjusting two parameters - the suction pressures and the nozzle implement type. On the other hand, the planting precision is indicated by the single seed sowing index. The results showed that the average quality of feed index is 70.53% when utilizing the large nozzle implement type with a vacuum pressure of 1019 Pa. The average working cycle time per tray and the machine capacity per hour are 51.0 seconds and 70 trays, respectively. Moreover, the prototype machine costs about 43% of the average cost of the existing commercial seeders in terms of cost-effectiveness.
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    Quantitative detection of pepper powder adulterated with rice powder using Fourier-transform near infrared spectroscopy
    (2019-09-09) ;
    Chalachai, S.
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    Sinjaru, S.
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    Singsriand, P.
    ;
    Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy model was developed for detecting pepper powder adulterated with rice powder. The adulterated pepper powder samples were prepared by mixing rice powders with pure pepper powder to 19 levels of concentrations (w/w) from 5-95%w/w. Two hundred ten NIR spectra of pure and adulterant pepper powders were recorded using Fourier-transform near infrared spectrometer. The NIRs quantitative model for detecting adulterant pepper were established using partial least squares regression (PLS). The optimum model was established from NIR spectra treated by constant offset elimination with the of 0.99. These results show that the NIR spectroscopy could be a modern method for monitoring adulteration of pepper powder with rice powder.
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    Item type:Publication,
    Modeling of hot air drying of coconut residue
    (2018-08-14)
    Wutthigarn, Pattawee
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    ;
    Sripinyowanich Jongyingcharoen, Jiraporn
    In this study, the effect of drying temperature (50-110°C) on hot air drying characteristics of coconut residue was investigated. The drying time and drying rate (DR) were in the ranges of 540-100 min and 0.0048-0.0182 g water/g dry matter·min at the drying temperature of 50-110°C, respectively. Six drying models (Lewis, Page, Henderson and Pabis, Logarithmic, Midilli et al, and linear-plus-exponential model) were used to determine the change in moisture ratio (MR) with drying time. The linear-plus-exponential model provided best fitting of the predicted MR to the experimental MR with the highest average R<sup>2</sup> of 0.9985 and the lowest RMSE of 0.01463. The variation of drying temperature with the constants and coefficient of the model was polynomial type. The generalized linear-plus-exponential model as a function of drying temperature gave best result of prediction of MR with the R<sup>2</sup> of 0.9709.