Non-Destructive Thermal Control of Vegetables and Fruits Using a Machine Vision System

Abstract

The article presents the description of a non-contact non-destructive method and a measuring device to control thermophysical properties of Vegetables and Fruits tissues. The proposed method was used to determine the thermal conductivity, heat capacity and coefficient of thermal diffusivity of potato tissues of various quality - both healthy and affected by various phyto-diseases. The results of the measurements were used to determine the process parameters of thermal control for automated sorting of potatoes using a machine vision system in the infrared region of the spectrum. The proposed method for determining thermophysical characteristics is based on the use of pulsed laser action on a flat surface area of a potato tuber, contact-free recording of the time variation of the temperature field of the tuber surface including the heat-affected zone, processing of the experimental data using the LabVIEW 2016 programming environment.