RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-EFFICIENCY MULTIFUNCTION FRUIT AND VEGETABLE DRYER

Abstract

The high-performance multifunction fruit and vegetable dryer is designed
and improved for the development of large-scale (industrial) drying systems to
reduce the waste of vegetables and improve their storage conditions. It consists
of 3 parts: the drying chamber; the fan supplying the drying agents and the heat
exchanger (heat supply). Performance tests and evaluations are carried out by
measuring many experimental samples based on several different vegetables and
fruits during many hours of drying in different drying modes. The average drying
temperature is selected in the range of 40 - 90ºC for carrots, 40 - 70ºC for
pineapple, the drying material is cut/sliced based on the original shape and
moisture of the fruit. The drying modes are changed the drying agent temperature
in the condition that the drying agent flow velocity through the material layer in
the drying chamber is about 1.55m/s constant. In addition, the drying time is
estimated at around 20.5 - 25.5 hours (shorter than other drying methods 4-6
hours) depending on the different drying materials, corresponding to the
achieved thermal efficiency of about 82.62%. Through all of the above, we can
recommend this design of large-scale dryers for industrial-scale businesses.