Chapter Three

DRYING SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL

PRODUCTS
Drying theory

• Drying is probably the oldest method of food

preservation.
• Early mankind quickly learned that placing food in
the sun until it no longer contained water was a
good way to make the food last longer.
• Today, while sun drying is still used in some parts of
the world, modern drying techniques are available
which allow control of factors, like drying rate and
temperature, which affect the quality of the final
product.
Cont’d
• Drying preserves food by removing moisture
from them.
• This stops microbial growth and prevents
spoilage.
• Although removing the moisture helps extend
the shelf-life of the product, care must be
taken during the drying process to preserve as
much of the product’s nutritive value, natural
flavor, and cooking quality as possible.
Cont’d
• It is important to remember that drying does
not improve the quality of a food product.
• For this reason, only fully-ripened produce
should be used for drying.
• If a product is not suitable for eating fresh, it is
not suitable for drying.
Cont’d
• Drying is the process to remove the moisture
content from the food material and thereby
reduce the water activity and extend the shelf
life.
• Several types of dryers and drying methods
are commercially used.
• The drying of foods and crops is a major
operation in the food industry, consuming
large quantities of energy.
Cont’d
• Dried foods are stable under ambient
conditions, easy to handle, possess extended
storage life, and can be easily incorporated
during food formulation and preparation.
• The drying operation is used either as a
primary process for preservation, or a
secondary process in certain product
manufacturing operations.
Cont’d

• Drying operations alone account for 10% to 25% of

the total energy in the food processing industry
worldwide (Mujumdar and Passos, 2009).
• One of the main goals in designing and optimizing
industrial drying processes is to reduce moisture at
minimum costs.
• Presently, energy conservation plays a major role to
make the process sustainable.
• To design a more efficient process, energy use and
quality changes, as well as heat and mass transfer
during processing, must be investigated.
Cont’d
• There are many drying techniques are
available.
• The most common technique is via air, in
which heat is applied by convection, which
carries away the vapor as humidity from the
product.
• Examples of this include sun drying and
artificial drying.
Cont’d
• Other drying techniques are vacuum drying
and fluidized bed drying, where agricultural
products are kept in vacuum conditions and
water is used to evaporate and fluidize the
material.
• These methods are suitable for heat sensible
crops.
Cont’d
• Drum drying is another method, where a
heated surface is used to provide energy; and
spray drying that atomizes the liquid particles
to remove moisture, like in milk powders.
• Special drying techniques are used for
preservation of big onion crops.
• This shows that drying is one of the most
important preservation techniques or
methods for food crops.
Advantages of Drying Food
• It is the simplest of all food preservation
methods.
• Removal of water results in products that
weigh less and take up less space.
• This means dried foods are easier and less
expensive to store and transport than other
types of preserved foods.
• Foods can be dried without destruction of the
cellular tissue of the food.
Limitations of Drying

• Drying is a fairly slow compared to other forms of food

preservation. Depending on the product and the
drying conditions, drying times can be as long as 12 to
24 hours.
• Mold can grow on partially dried foods, so once drying
is started it should continue without interruption.
• Not all foods dry well. For some fruits and several
vegetables other preservation methods such as
canning or freezing are better methods of
preservation.
Cont’d
• Appropriate pre treatment is often necessary
to prevent discoloration and other
undesirable changes that may occur during
drying.
• Drying causes physical changes, like
shrinkage. For example, plums become
prunes and grapes become raisins.
• Due to these changes adding water back the
product may not return it to its original state.
The Fundamentals of Drying of Agricultural
Crops
• A crop is any cultivated plant that is harvested
for food, livestock fodder, biofuel, medicine, or
other uses.
• Agricultural crops can be broadly classified as
durable and perishable crops.
• Durable crops (such as grains and legumes)
contain relatively low amounts of water, and
perishable crops (such as fruits and vegetables)
contain high amounts of water during harvesting
Cont’d
• Therefore, durable crops can be stored for
extensive periods of time in comparison to
perishable crops.
• However, durable crops need to be dried with
sufficiently low moisture content before
sending to stores for safe, long-term storage.
• Drying is an important operation in terms of
improving and extending the shelf-life of
durable crops.
Cont’d
• As explained above, durable crops, such as grains
and pulses, should be dried up to their equilibrium
moisture content with warehouse atmospheric
conditions (the most preferable warehouse
atmospheric condition for safe storage of a durable
crop is between 25–30°C, with a relative humidity of
65% to 75%).
• Thus, it can be said that drying is the procedure
used to remove excess moisture from the grain to
reduce moisture levels to a level which is acceptable
for safe storage.
Cont’d
• Drying results in a reduction of losses during
storage from causes such as:
– Premature and unseasonable germination of the
grain
– Development of moulds
– Proliferation of insects
THE DRYING PROCESS
• There is more to producing good quality dried
products than simply removing the water.
Food often requires a pre treatment to halt
enzyme activity.
• The food is then dried to remove moisture
and halt the growth of microorganisms.
Preparing Foods for Drying
Selection and Preparation of Produce
• Select high quality, fresh, fully ripened
produce for drying.
• Immature materials will lack flavor and color.
• Over-mature produce may be fibrous or
mushy.
• Foods that are not in good condition for eating
fresh and/or cooking are not suitable for
drying.
Cont’d
• Prepare the product immediately after harvest and
begin drying it as quickly as possible.
• Most products should be washed thoroughly to remove
any dirt or spray.
• Sort and discard any imperfect material. Decay, bruises,
or mold on any piece may affect an entire batch.
• Trim, peel, cut, slice, or shred the product. Pieces
should be relatively uniform.
• Thinner, smaller pieces will dry faster than larger,
thicker ones resulting in some product being over-dried
before other pieces are dried enough.
Pre treating

• Enzymes in plant material are responsible for

color and flavor changes during ripening.
• Unless these enzymes are stopped, changes
will continue during drying and storage.
• Fruits and vegetables that will be dried are
often given a treatment to slow or stop
enzymatic action prior to being placed in the
dehydrator.
Blanching

• Blanching is the process most often recommended for

inactivating enzymes in vegetables and some fruits
before drying.
• Blanching is a heat treatment that inactivates enzymes
but is not severe enough to cook the food. It may be
done with water, steam or high pressure processing.
• Water blanching involves placing the product in boiling
water for a specified amount of time.
• Once the blanching time is over, the product is
removed from the boiling water and immediately
plunged into cold water to stop the cooking process.
Cont’d
• A variation on water blanching used for “candied”
dried fruit is blanching in a sugar syrup. This type
of blanching helps hold the color of fruits very
well, but the fruit will take longer to dry and will
tend to attract insects if not packaged properly.
• Fruits such as grapes, prunes, and small dark
plums, cherries, figs and some firm berries like
blueberries have relatively tough skins with a
waxy coating. These tough surfaces serve to seal
in moisture.
Cont’d
• To allow interior moisture to be drawn out during
drying, the skins are often cracked or “checked” to
remove this waxy substance. To crack the skins, the
fruit is dipped into briskly boiling water, then in a
very cold water before drying..
• For steam blanching, the product is heated by
exposing it to steam, rather than placing it in boiling
water. As with water blanching, the product should
be cooled as soon as the blanching process is
complete to prevent overcooking
Cont’
• Steam blanching usually results in less
leaching of solids and greater retention of
water soluble vitamins than occurs with water
blanching.
• Emerging techniques such as high pressure
processing and infrared blanching are offering
food processors new approaches to
pretreating products for drying.
Other Pre treatment Methods
• Blanching can be used to prevent enzymatic
activity in fruits, however, blanching may
cause the fruit to darken slightly.
• It may also give a cooked flavor to some fruits,
such as apricots, peaches, and pears, and
blanched fruits may be soft and a little difficult
to handle. For these reasons, other methods
may be chosen for pretreating fruits. :
Cont’d
• Some pre treatment methods used with fruits
include:
– Dipping the fruit in a solution of a food acid, such as
ascorbic acid or citric acid, to inactivate the enzymes on
the surface of the pieces. Any edible acid will inactivate
the enzymes but if the acid used is one already present
in the fruit, no new flavor will be added.
– Soaking the fruit for about 10 minutes in a salt solution
will work as a pretreatment. This treatment has the
disadvantage of introducing a salty flavor to the fruit.
Cont’d
• A fruit juice high in ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
can also be used as a pretreatment dip. This is
generally not as effective as a pure ascorbic
acid dip and tends to add some of the color
and flavor of the fruit juice to the product
being treated. Juices high in ascorbic acid
include lemon, orange, pineapple, grape, and
cranberry.
Drying of cereals and feed grains

• Durable crops, such as grains and pulses, should be

dried up to their equilibrium moisture content with
warehouse atmospheric conditions (the most
preferable warehouse atmospheric condition for
safe storage of a durable crop is between 25–30°C,
with a relative humidity of 65% to 75%).
• Thus, it can be said that drying is the procedure
used to remove excess moisture from the grain to
reduce moisture levels to a level which is
acceptable for safe storage.
 Grain/Legume Moisture Content
• The moisture content of a product is a
numerical value expressed as a percentage.
• This is determined by the relationship
between the weight of the water contained in
a given sample of grain and the total weight of
that sample.
• There are two ways to measure moisture
content i.e., wet basis and dry basis.
Cont’d

Where, Mwb = moisture content (wet

basis),
Mdb = moisture content (dry basis),
Ww = weight of water,
Wdm = weight of dry matter.
Cont’d
• Grains are “hydroscopic”, meaning that in
ambient air they can either give off or absorb
water in the form of vapor.
• However, at a given temperature the air cannot
absorb unlimited quantities of water vapor.
• The air is considered to be “saturated” when it
is unable to absorb water vapor at a given
temperature and has a relative humidity of
100%.
Relative Humidity
• The relative humidity of the air, expressed by
percentage, is defined as the relationship
between the weight of the water vapor
contained in 1 kg of air and the weight of
water vapor contained in 1 kg of saturated air
at a given temperature.
Air-grain Equilibrium
• For a certain category of products and for a given
temperature, equilibrium in the exchange of water
vapor between the grain and the air is represented
by the curve called “hydroscopic equilibrium curve”.
• Equilibrium Moisture Content :
• Any hydroscopic material (including grain) has its
own characteristic balance (or equilibrium) between
the moisture it contains and the water vapor in the
air to which it is in contact with. This is known as the
equilibrium moisture content (EMC).
Cont’d
• When food grains containing a certain amount
of moisture are exposed to air, moisture
moves from the grain to the air, or vice versa,
until there is a balance between the vapor
pressure of grain and ambient air.
• Each food grain has a characteristic moisture
balance curve, which is obtained by plotting a
graph of moisture content against the relative
humidity and temperature of the air.
Drying Process

• Drying of products can thus be obtained by

circulating air at varying degrees of heat
through a mass of grains.
• As it moves, the air imparts heat to the grain,
while absorbing the humidity of the
outermost layers. In terms of physics, the
exchange of heat and humidity between the
air and the product to be dried is seen in the
following phenomena:
Cont’d
• Heating of the grain, accompanied by a cooling
of the drying air
• Reduction in the moisture content of the grain,
accompanied by an increase in the relative
humidity of the drying air. However, this process
does not take place uniformly.
• The water present in the outer layers of grain
evaporates much faster and more easily than
that of the internal layers. Thus, it is much harder
to lower the moisture content of a product.
Cont’d
• It would be a mistake to think that this difficulty can
be overcome by rapid drying at high temperature.
• In fact, such drying conditions create internal
tensions, producing tiny cracks that can lead to the
rupture of the grain during subsequent treatments.
• For drying grain, essentially two methods are used:
– Natural drying
– Artificial drying
A. Natural Drying
• The natural drying method consists essentially of exposing
the high moist grain or legumes to the air (in sun or shade).
• To obtain the desired moisture content, the grain or
legumes are spread in thin layers on a drying floor, where it
is exposed to the air (in sun or shade) for a maximum of 10
to 15 days. To encourage uniform drying, the grain or
legumes must be stirred frequently, especially if it is in
direct sunlight.
• Furthermore, for drying to be effective, the relative
humidity of the ambient air must not be higher than 70%.
For that reason, grain must not be exposed at night..
Cont’d
• In fact, by bringing about an increase in the
relative humidity of the air, the cold of the night
fosters re-humidification of the grain. For the
same reasons, this method should not be used
in humid regions or during the rainy season. It
must be remembered that insufficient or
excessively slow drying can bring about severe
losses of product during storage from the self-
generated heat of “green” grain
Cont’d
• Finally, prolonged exposure of grain to
atmospheric factors, and thus to pest attack
(insects, rodents, and birds) and
microorganisms (molds), can also cause losses
of product.
• Despite these drawbacks, natural drying is
advantageous in the following situations:
Cont’d
• When atmospheric conditions favor a
reduction in moisture content over a
reasonably short time-span;
• When the quantities of grain to be dried are
modest;
• When production organization and
socioeconomic conditions do not justify the
cost of installing artificial drying equipment
Artificial Drying
• The introduction of high-yielding crop varieties and the
progressive mechanization of agriculture now make it possible to
harvest large quantities of grain with high moisture content in a
short amount of time.
• In humid tropical and subtropical zones, due to unfavorable
weather conditions at harvest time, it is often difficult to
safeguard the quality of products.
• In order to satisfy the need for an increasing agricultural
production, it is therefore necessary to dry the products in
relatively brief periods of time, whatever the ambient conditions.
• Consequently, it is necessary to resort to artificial drying which
consists of exposing the grain to a forced ventilation of air that is
heated to a certain degree in special appliances called “dryers”.
Grain/Legumes Dryers
• In its construction, the basic elements of a dryer are:
– The body of the dryer, which contains the grain or
legumes to be dried;
– The hot air generator, which permits heating of the
drying air;
– The ventilator, which permits circulation of the drying air
through the mass of grain.
• Two main types of dryers are used:
– Static or discontinuous dryers
– Continuous type dryers
Static or discontinuous dryers

• Static or discontinuous dryers are batch (tray) type dryers

handle a single batch of product at a time. The product is
placed on trays that are loaded into the drier. The drier is
turned on.
• When the product is dry, the trays are removed from the
drier and the product removed from the trays.
• These driers are fairly simple in design but are also
somewhat inefficient for large scale operations since they
are not operational while the trays are being filled, loaded
into the dryer and unloaded when drying is complete.
Batch dryers are most often used for small-scale
operations and in pilot plants,
Cont’d
• Static or discontinuous dryers are inexpensive
and can treat only modest quantities of grain;
thus, they are better adapted to the needs of
small and medium scale centers for the
collection and processing of products.
• A current of hot air moves from the bottom
to top through a thick layer of grain. Drying of
the mass of grain does not take place in a
uniform
Cont’d
• fashion. As it moves from the bottom to the top, the
drying air imparts heat to the grain and absorbs
moisture, losing its “drying power” in the process.
• The lower layers will therefore dry more rapidly than
the upper.
• Most batch dryers have this problem because most of
the dryer’s drying area is manufactured as a tank.
During the drying process, the mass of grain is thus
found to be divided into three areas:
– Area of dry grain,
– Drying area and
– Area of humid grain
Cont’d
Some examples of static or discontinuous type
dryers are:
• 1) Batch Dryers for Small-Scale Grain Drying
• 2) Batch Type Continuous Flow Dryers for
Medium- and Large-Scale Grain Drying
• 3) Batch Drying in Fluidized Bed Dryer
• 4) Batch Type Maize (Corn) Dryer
• 5) Batch Type Small-Scale Fresh Paddy Dryer
Cont’d
• Continuous Fluidized Bed Dryer is the
common continuous type dryer provided for
drying of materials in fluidized bed which
comprises of a drying bed having an air inlet
for injecting hot air into the bed, the
arrangement for feeding the grain or legumes
into the drying chamber column, and a single
or more discharge outlets for the automatic
and continuous removal of dried material in a
suspended state.
Continuous type dryers

• Continuous driers are designed so that the food enters the

dryer on a conveyer belt, passes through the drying
treatment, and then exits without stopping the dryer. Since
product can be placed on the conveyor continuously, there is
no need to stop the process between batches.
• These dryers are best when there is a need to run large
amounts of product over long periods of time.
• Continuous type dryers are high-flow dryers that need a
more complex infrastructure, complementary equipment and,
above all, special planning and organization. They are
therefore more appropriate for big centers, silos, or
warehouses, where very large quantities of product are
treated.
 Assignment and Project Work
• Assignment: Enumerate the different types of fruits
and Vegetable dryers. Discuss the Advantage and the
disadvantage of each
• Project Work: As It is known Agricultural products
ranges from cultivated edible products and wild
plants. To extend the awareness regarding wild
plants. Students are required to identify the wild
medicinal plants in their local area A. Write their local
Name and Scientific Name. B. How it is processed C.
For what type of illness it Used.
• Write down the local and Scientific name of Wild
edible plants that You know, Which part of plant is
eaten