Pengeringan Jagung Menggunakan Alat Pengering Efek Rumah Kaca dengan Sumber Energi Surya dan Biomassa Tongkol Jagung

Abstract

Drying process is one of important stage in handling of agricultural products. However, this process required much energy to remove moisture from the product. Because of that, it was needed a dryer to remove water from inside of products. A dryer with solar energy as a heat source combined with heat energy from corncob biomass was designed and used in corn dried. The dryer is usually known as green house effect-hybrid (GHE-hybrid). GHE-hybrid consists of absorber, product holder, fans to remove moisture from dried product, heat exchanger, stove and water tank. The heat source used in dryer comes from solar radiation and biomass burned in stove. The objective of this research was to evaluate performance of dryer use solar energy and corncob as heating sources. Results of this research showed that drying process of 1526 kg of corn with initial moisture content 25.7% wet basic until 16.7% wet basic needed drying time of 14 hours. The corncobs that were needed to remove the moisture was about 180 kg. The energy calculated in this drying process from corncob, diesel fuel, solar radiation which were about 3150 MJ or 62%, 1739.71MJ or 34%, 204.94 MJ or 4%, respectively. The research also found that the thermal eficiency of dryer was 28%, eficiency of drying heat was 59.62%, total eficiency was 11.23% and specific energy consumption was 31522,52 kJ/kg.