Investigation of Solar Drying of Ginger (Zingiber officinale): Emprical Modelling, Drying Characteristics, and Quality Study

Abstract

Drying is a simultaneous heat and mass transfer energy intensive operation, widely used as a food preservation technique. In view of improper postharvest methods, energy constraint, and environmental impact of conventional drying methods, solar drying could be a practical, economical, and environmentally reliable alternative. In the present paper applicability of mixed mode solar cabinet dryer was investigated for drying of commercially important and export oriented ginger. Freshly harvested ginger slices were successfully dried from initial moisture content of 621.50 to 12.19% (d.b.) and their drying characteristics, quality parameters, and kinetics were evaluated. The results showed that present solar dryer could be successfully applied for drying of ginger in view of quality, reduced drying time, and zero energy requirement as compared to conventional open sun drying and convective drying techniques, respectively. Drying curves showed that drying occurred in falling rate period and no constant period was observed. The effective moisture diffusivity was determined by using Fick's second law and found to be 1.789 × 10 −9 m 2 /s. The drying data was fitted to five thin layer drying models and compared using statistical criteria. Page model was found to be most suitable to describe the drying kinetics of ginger in solar dryer under natural convection among the tested models.

Retracted: Experimentally investigated the asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) drying with flat‐plate collector under the natural convection indirect solar dryer

“…However, the moisture removing rate is also dependent on the ease of heat transfer. Forced convection drying system has been reported to be best suitable for faster drying as the value of the coefficient of convective heat transfer associated with them is more than the natural convection drying (Azharul Karim & Hawlader, 2005;Deshmukh et al, 2013Deshmukh et al, , 2014. From Figure 4, it has been observed that the values of convective heat transfer coefficient decrease with the progression of drying months, that is, June, July, and August 2016.…”

“…About half of the total production of Asparagus is being consumed as white and red Asparagus, whereas the remaining 30% is converted into dry Asparagus for medicinal purposes, and 20% is used as seed material (Deshmukh, Varma, Yoo, & Wasewar, 2014).…”

Carrageenan Extracted from Eucheuma cottonii Through Variant of Drying Time

“…The moisture content decrease after 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 minutes. From the experiment was done above, which have strong correlation with the drying processes of other food products [5,7,8,13,14]. One of the high-quality factor from the consumer's point view was the changing of the colour after dried [14].…”

“…One of disadvantage of this method, seaweed is not good in quality and also the problem of hygienic. The product gets contaminated from dust, insects, rodents, and other animals, which seriously lowering the food quality [5]. Drying kinetics in seaweeds was also studied under these following pre-treatments: open drying and drying at various temperature from 40-90 °C [6].…”

Design of Solar Dryer Assisted with Reflector for Drying of Medicinal Crops

“…Figure 3 revealed that the drying rate of Safed Musli dried in T1, T2 and T3 trays of domestic solar dryer integrated with reflector varied from 1.3384 to 0.0047, 1.2308 to 0.0224 and 1.2214 to 0.0254 gm/100gm bdm min, respectively Figure 3 revealed that the drying rate of Safed Musli dried in T1, T2 and T3 trays of domestic solar dryer integrated with reflector varied from 1.3384 to 0.0047, 1.2308 to 0.0224 and 1.2214 to 0.0254 gm/100gm bdm min, respectively and average drying rate was found to be 0.5526, 0.54103 and 0.53455 gm/100gm bdm min, respectively. Deshmukh et al, 2014).…”