CALCULATION OF APRICOT DRYING TIME IN SOLAR DRYER WITH FORCED CONVECTION

Abstract

Drying of agricultural produce in the open sun is one of the traditional methods of drying. Dryers of various sizes and models are often used to dry food produce using the solar energy. The forced convection solar dryer is one of the recent developments in drying of apricots, and calculating its performance improvement is not sufficiently studied. This work reviews the process of making of high-quality turshak, bargak (qaysa) and kuraga from apricots using the forced convection solar dryer. Also, characteristics of air flows and temperature dependence on drying time have been taken into consideration. According to findings from theoretical calculations, drying time has been calculated at the air flow values of 0.018, 0.028, and 0.034 kg/s. Theoretically, 750 g of dried apricots can be obtained from 4 kg of wet apricots in 48.36 minutes. It was found that the air flow and temperature changes in the forced convection solar dryer are the main parameters affecting the time of drying.