Development of a Biochemical Oxygen Demand Incubator Prototype based on Thermoelectric Effect with Monitoring System

Abstract

In the last decades various internal refrigeration or heating equipment has been developed mainly for a specific use, such as refrigerators air conditioning and freezers each with technology for temperature control. The incubator's greenhouses were originally developed to incubate long-lasting biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) tests. The objective of this work was to build a low-cost BOD incubator and to technically evaluate temperature control through an adjustment to the electrical current in the system supply in addition to wireless monitoring. The project consisted of the dimensioning and projection of the materials for the refrigeration system, the realization of the algorithm that connects the physical part with the logical part of the system, with the development of hardware and software using Arduino to the 3D mechanical part. with the construction of the incubator for the validation of the complete system. It is concluded that the use of thermoelectric TEC1-12706 was possible with the variables presented for the cooling of a small volume. Thus, the prototype of the BOD incubator achieved a minimum temperature of 13 °C and maximum of 40 °C with an approximate error of 0.2 °C. Our BOD system presented an excellent control system through a smartphone that helps in experiments in the laboratory to guarantee the ideal temperature. In addition, the incubator is inexpensive portable and lightweight.