Abstract
After harvest and storage problems are major dilemma, which requires to be looked into carefully in developing nation like Nigeria. This paper presents a development of low-cost hybrid solar dryer for food preservation with the objective of setting optimum drying parameters for the preservation of cassava and tomato products. The work was carried out by designing, constructing and finally evaluating the hybrid dryer for effective performance. The optimization of the drying parameters was done using composite technique (Response surface method). The assessment of the dryer shows that 150 Kg cassava mesh and 5000 grams of tomato with 35% and 94% moisture content, respectively were dried to 100 Kg and 334 g with 10% moisture level for 4 hours and 11 hours respectively, for cassava and tomato. The optimization result shows that the dryer will perform optimally with drying temperature of 62°C and 48°C for cassava and tomato respectively with 24% and 91% moisture uptake. Therefore, sustainable techniques for preservation of food are essentially required. Hybrid solar dryer is an alternative to consider in the situation.
Highlights
Drying process is one of the ubiquitous forms of conservation of food items that prolongs the food item’s shelf life
This paper presents a development of low-cost hybrid solar dryer for food preservation with the objective of setting optimum drying parameters for the preservation of cassava and tomato products
Hybrid solar dryer is an alternative to consider in the situation
Summary
Drying process is one of the ubiquitous forms of conservation of food items that prolongs the food item’s shelf life. This type of operation is described as concurrent energy and mass transfer where water content is withdrawn from food material via superheated air [1]. As a result of recent tides toward exorbitant cost implication of fossil fuels and skepticism toward oncoming cost, availability and sustainability, utilization of solar energy in food conservation has presumably increased, becomes highly profitably realistic in the future
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