Development of a small capacity food dryer
1995
Diamante, L.M. (Visayas State Coll. of Agriculture, Baybay 6521-A, Leyte (Philippines). Dept. of Agriculture Chemistry and Food Sciences)
The Philippines has an abundant supply of fruits and vegetables. However, these crops have very high moisture which lead to their fast deterioration. By reducing the moisture content of these crops to low levels, microorganisms cannot grow thereby increasing their keeping quality. Some vegetables such as rootcrops are also dried and as a preparatory step for further processing into flour. An electric food dryer was developed for this purpose and at the same time overcome the drawbacks of solar and agrowaste dryers. The small capacity electric food dryer consists of a blowing section, a heating section, a flow straigthening/mixing section and drying chamber with exhaust windows. Evaluation of the dryer showed that it has good temperature distribution across all trays in the drying chamber. Hence, there was no need to shift trays so often to equalize the drying of the products. Twenty-one kilogram of fresh sweetpotato flakes were dried in the dryer at 70-75 deg C for 11 hrs using 48 KW hr of electricity and resulting in 8 kg of dried flakes. The initial moisture content of fresh sweetpotato flakes was 120 percent dry basis while the final average moisture content of dried flakes was 8 percent dry basis. The resulting dried flakes was very high quality
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