Drying Behaviour of Plantain Chips using Three Methods of Drying

Abstract

Various studies have confirmed that in view of the time required for drying agricultural products to safe and suitable moisture content for storage, consumption and transportation, the forced convection solar dryer is time saving, effective, and user-friendly. With these benefits, drying is expected to enormously increase the quantities of agricultural produce ready for sale, storage and consumption, raise farmers’ incomes and consequently improve their standards of living. The recent efforts to improve “sun-drying” have led to the development of “solar drying” methods which can preserve foods for long periods of time after harvesting and prevent spoilage or deterioration as much as possible. Thus, a comparative analysis of the performance of the solar dryer and sun-drying method is an important contribution to the storage aspects of agricultural mechanization. The solar dryer is able to raise the ambient air temperature to the high level needed to increase the drying rate of an agricultural produce. The moisture content of plantain of about 70% wet basis indicated by the drying rate was removed by an oven dryer at constant temperature of 105° C within 340 minutes and by the assisted solar dryer in 1440 minutes. During the forced convection mode, the air-assisted solar dryer temperature was higher than the sun-drying by a maximum of 6.3%. The variation in temperature affected other drying parameters like moisture content, relative humidity, drying rate, and equilibrium moisture content