Investigation of pineapple drying in the designed solar energy-assisted drying system

It is widely used in agricultural products due to its advantages such as drying, prolonging product shelf life, transportation and storage, without loss of nutrients and packaging. It is economical for drying agricultural products, does not require high technology, has extremely low operating and maintenance costs, uses renewable energy, is clean and environmentally friendly. Solar drying systems are frequently used due to their superiority. In this study, pineapple fruit was dried using a solar air collector in a prototype drying container designed. A total of four different drying methods were examined: outdoors (average 35-39°C), 70°C, 60°C and 50°C. Pineapples were cut into slices of fifty grams each and placed in drying areas. Measurements were taken at regular intervals every 30 minutes. Based on the data obtained, the drying process carried out in the open air and in the oven at different temperatures was examined. As a result, it was observed that approximately 85-87% of the pineapple fruit was liquid and at the end of the drying process, the weight of 50gr pineapples decreased to 6.5gr. It was observed that during the drying process, the most liquid loss occurred in the first hours and the biggest weight differences occurred in the first hours. It was decided that the drying process carried out in the drying container at different temperatures was more hygienic and shorter in terms of time compared to the drying process carried out in the open air. Percentage moisture change, humidity rate and moisture content were calculated with the data obtained from the measurements taken. While the percent humidity change rate was 87% at the beginning of the experiment, this rate changed between 3-4% at the end of the experiment. Likewise, at the beginning of the experiment, the humidity rate was assumed to be 1 and the moisture content was 6.69, but at the end of the experiment, it was observed that the humidity rate varied between 0.01 and moisture content 0.04-0.08. It was calculated that in the pineapple fruit drying process carried out in the designed food drying oven, there was a 50% increase in efficiency at 70°C, 28% at 60°C and 12.5% at 50°C compared to the traditional drying process.