Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural

Abstract

MELO, Evandro de Castro, RADUNZ, Lauri Lourenço and BERBERT, Pedro Amorim. Development and assessment of tray dryer for medicinal and aromatic plants. In Procedings of the 4th Encontro de Energia no Meio Rural, 2002, Campinas (SP) [online]. 2002 [cited 26 April 2024]. Available from: <http://www.proceedings.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=MSC0000000022002000200051&lng=en&nrm=iso> .

The medicinal plants are usually submitted to the drying process with a medium moisture content of 85% b.u., being reduced to a medium content of 11%. With temperature of the drying air among 30 to 50 ºC, are consumed on the average 10,000 kJ kg^-1 of removed water. An experimental dryer was built with system of heating of the air through burns of liquefied gas of petroleum. The drying camera was constituted of 4 trays of aluminum (1 x 0.5 x 0.15 m), perforate in the inferior part and superior, disposed in horizontal and with flow of ascending air. The consumption of LGP was obtained being weighed the recipient of gas, and the consumption of electric energy was registered by a meter of consumption of energy. The consumption energy total varied of 2,525 to 30,261 kJ kg^-1 of dry plant. Being compared the drying treatments with air the temperature environment and heated at 85 ºC, is observed decrease of the energy consumption of 13.6 times. The consumption of liquefied gas of petroleum varied of 1.18 to 0.47 kg kg^-1 of dry plant. The developed dryer showed technically and economically viable for the drying of medicinal and aromatic plants.

Keywords : dryer; drying; consumption energy; Mikania glomerata.