Development of heat pump and infrared-convective dryer and performance analysis for stale bread drying

Abstract

This experimental study aims to develop a heat pump dryer (HPD) and an infrared dryer (IRD) also the comparative empirical analyses of these two methods and to analyze the drying kinetic of stale bread sliced 15mm thickness and effectiveness on the drying kinetics of the stale bread of dryers. Dryers have been developed by using different techniques such as heat recovery unit, proportional control (PC) of drying air temperature, simultaneous control of the relative humidity–temperature–air flow rate, water cycle dehumidifier and closed-loop cycle to increase the drying efficiency of industrial drying applications. The highest coefficient of performance of the whole heat pump system (COPws,HP) was calculated as 3.7 and drying efficiencies of the IRD and HPD systems were calculated as 39% and 25%, respectively. When the HPD and IRD systems were compared in terms of drying time and energy consumption, it was observed that the IRD system did not only shortened the drying time up to 69%, but also decreased the energy consumption of the system by 43.2%. Based on the obtained results the effective moisture diffusivity (De) was calculated in the range from 8.3×10−8 to 3.2×10−7m2/s and mass transfer coefficient (hm) was varied from 1.17×10−5to 4.52×10−5m/s. It was concluded that both dryers have significant effect in reduction of water content; the relative humidity controlled HPD can be applied efficiently for dryers and the dried stale bread can be reused as bread crumb by food industry.