<![CDATA[Energy efficiency in water heaters is a crucial factor in ship operational environments due to limited electricity resources that rely on generators. This study aims to design and build an IoT-based water heater monitoring system with an innovative heat storage medium in the form of a mixture of silica sand and paraffin wax to improve thermal efficiency. Although previous studies have developed temperature monitoring and control systems in IoT-based water heaters, this study specifically fills this gap by analyzing the performance of adding silica sand to overcome the low thermal conductivity of paraffin wax. Using the Research and Development (R&D) method, this system was built with an ESP32 microcontroller as the control center, a DS18B20 temperature sensor for accurate measurements, and the Blynk and Google Sheets platforms for real-time monitoring and data recording. Performance testing was conducted by comparing the water heating rate between pure paraffin wax media and the mixed media. The results showed that the monitoring system functioned reliably, and the main finding proved that the addition of silica sand to paraffin wax significantly increased heating efficiency. This was clearly seen from the reduction in time required to raise the water temperature to 40°C, from 2.5 hours to only 1 hour in the second heating cycle. The results of this study indicate that the integration of silica sand and paraffin wax media with IoT technology can increase the efficiency of water heaters and provide an innovative solution for energy-efficient and environmentally friendly temperature control.]]>
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