Study on the convective drying of potato cube

Abstract

Drying is a conventional method of food preservation that removes sufficient number of moistures from the food so bacteria, yeast and molds cannot grow. There are several drying techniques can be found in industry such as convective drying and freeze drying. In this study a potato cube is taken into consideration of convective drying experimentally. A small-scale wind tunnel has been designed and fabricated. During experiment, the temperature and mass of the potato cube are measured and recorded. Temperature and velocity of the hot drying air are measured. In order to provide a better analysis computational fluid dynamic is also carried out. The heat and mass transfer analysis during the drying are presented. The results show that the average drying rate of the potato cube is 4.061 gr/hour. The present results can be used to support the necessary information on developing high efficient artificial drier.