Moisture-Loss Prediction System in Withering of Pepper using Machine Learning

摘要

Spices and beverages plays an important role in every cuisine. The quality of these products should be good enough for their best use. The processing steps involved during their manufacturing and the implementation methodology determines the quality of these products. Among spices, Pepper is known as the king of spices. For assuring the quality of pepper, better methods during processing must be adopted. Withering is the most crucial process in the manufacturing of black pepper. It determines the quality and durability of the final product. In this paper, a system is implemented to attain the desired Moisture Loss (ML) during the withering process of black pepper. This is achieved by predicting in advance the ML using Machine Learning algorithm. The main factors influencing the prediction process are inlet and outlet temperature and relative humidity. A prototype trough is developed with smart sensor nodes placed at the inlet and outlet for measuring moisture and temperature. The data measured is saved in a database and this is utilised to predict the ML using ANN(Artificial Neural Network). The error between predictedML and actual ML due to weight loss is analysed.