Corn drying with a rotary dryer: Effect of airspeed and drying temperature operating conditions

Abstract

Corn Drying with Rotary Dryer has been widely applied to dry corn for post-harvest processing. The corn used is corn pioneer-32 from agricultural products in the Tanjung Anom area, Deli Serdang. Heating by using LPG gas to increase drying efficiency as well as by controlling the drying air speed to adjust the drying rate. In this study, the drying kinetics and the effect of moisture ratio on time have been investigated for several variations of operating conditions, namely drying air velocity for 2,3,4, and 5 m/s and drying temperature for 40, 50, 60, and 70 ±5oC. The results show that the air velocity does not have a significant effect, but the drying temperature affects the moisture ratio. The suitable drying kinetics in this research is the Page Modified-II model which is suitable.