Design, Fabricate and Performance Evaluation of Portable Incubator

Abstract

For rural water supply system, the microbiological parameter such as Escherichia coli needs to be monitored at least thrice a year. Lack of portable incubator is an obstacle for monitoring the water quality. The research focused on design, fabrication and performance evaluation of the portable incubator and performs validation of the setup. Experimental research methodology was performed for the research where data were collected from various devices of empty and loaded setup of two incubators using heating foil and 12V DC bulb as heating source, placed in an AVC-144 vaccine carrier box powered by solar PV setup or grid electricity. The weight of the portable incubator with full test plates is 3.0kg. The results shows that the inbuilt incubators performed satisfactorily consuming less 0.620A and 1.322 A, and 7.44 W and 15.864W of power for bulb and heating foil incubator, respectively. The heating core operated 16 times for heating foil-based and 14 times for bulb-based incubator to complete one cycle of incubation. The total operation hours for one cycle of 24 hours were 1.07 hours and 2.33 hours for heating foil-based incubator and bulb-based incubator respectively. The temperature inside the incubator casing remained uniform with significant reduction of heat loss.