Drying of Agricultural Producs Using Heat Energy from Steam Boiler

Abstract

The paper presents the drying study of agricultural producs using energy from steam. Two producs of banana and chili The system consisted of boiler at 200 kg/hr of capacity and a stainless steel dryer (volume 0.75m³) with insulation system. Heat exchanger was installed at the bottom of dryer for circulated steam at 0.5, 1.0 and 2 bar of steam pressure. Heat exchangd between agricultural product and steam was by force convection and natural convection heat transfer. The results show that the optimized force convection process of 0.5 bar steam pressure and temperature 0f 68-72 ^oC for 8 hr drying time yieided the best result. For the natural convection process at pressure of 1.0 bar steam pressure and dryer chamber temperature about 65-70 ^oC  for 10 hr drying time