The DesiGators hard at work solving various thermodynamics problems for their food dehydrator. Photos by: Korynn Haetten

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Happy Homecoming! The four-day week meant the DesiGators didn’t have the chance to meet with their liaison this week, but that doesn’t mean we were any less productive! The team took the week to tackle some of the more difficult mathematical problems associated with building a food dehydrator.

At the coach meeting, Dr. Jackson helped the team visualize what the thermal circuit for the system would look like and posed some interesting questions for the team about how to consider fluid flow inside the drying chamber.

Immediately following the meeting, the DesiGators met up again and Alex walked the rest of the team through the calculations behind his Excel calculator. The nifty tool will allow the team to get rough estimates for the sizes needed for the drying chambers and helps model the flow of thermal energy throughout the system.

Virginia took the role of instructor for the last half of the meeting and the team worked their way through a drying example problem provided by Dr. Jackson. The problem was a test of the team’s knowledge of drying, psychrometry, and thermodynamics and was essentially a textbook example of the thermal calculations behind a drying system.

Mathematical progress aside, the team made a major step in the development of their initial prototype as well! On Tuesday, Virginia and Dr. MacIntosh were able to sit down and purchase parts for the Raspberry Pi system and various temperature and humidity sensors. The parts should arrive next week (fingers crossed) which means the DesiGators can finally get their hands dirty. Stay tuned for more updates!