No abstract

One of the most important tasks of agricultural production is to obtain food products of plant origin, which include grain legumes, vegetables, fruits, etc. Long-term storage of many kinds of plants in their natural form under normal conditions is not possible and requires the use of processing, such as drying. A special niche is occupied by medicinal plants, on the basis of which medicinal preparations, biologically active additives (BAAs), as well as spices for food are produced. Nowadays, out of 100 thousand medicines used in the world medical practice, medicinal preparations made of plants make up more than 30%. In our country the share of such remedies and preparations is about 40%. In addition to natural methods of drying, artificial methods are widely used with the help of special drying units. This requires large amounts of electrical or thermal energy from fuel combustion, as more than 65,000 tonnes of medicinal raw materials are harvested in our country each year. It is not always possible to achieve the required product performance. The use of electric energy seems to be the most preferable, since it eliminates the costs of delivery, storage of solid or liquid fuel, reduces environmental damage, and obtains the necessary properties through “fine” control of the drying technology. Currently, farms and individual farms specialise in growing medicinal plants and supplying medicinal raw materials for homeopathic pharmacies and pharmacological industries. In this regard, improving drying methods and creating small capacity electric drying plants that ensure an efficient technological process and reduce the energy intensity of drying is an urgent task.