White noodles drying with air dehumidified by the solid moisture adsorbents

Abstract

Drying is an important step in the preparation of white noodles popular as sohun. The process aims to remove moisture content.in wet sohun up to 14.5% referring to Industry National Standard of Indonesia. White noodles were commonly dried with direct sunlight in which was weather dependency both for process continuity and product quality. The paper discusses the effect of air dehumidification with several solid moisture adsorbents such as natural zeolite and synthetic zeolite on the thermal efficiency of sohun drying. At this point, the sohun was dried under air temperature 50 °C, 60 °C, and ambient temperature. The moisture content in sohun was observed every 15 minutes for operational drying time 150 minutes. As a comparison, the conventional drying without heating the air was also evaluated. Results showed that the higher air temperature resulted in faster drying time. With adsorbents, the performance of the dryer can be improved where the synthetic zeolite was the most superior compare to the others.