Development of A Convection Dryer for Sliced Fish Cracker

Muhammad Naim, Bin Leman (2019) Development of A Convection Dryer for Sliced Fish Cracker. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

A low cost convection dryer for sliced fish cracker with a capacity of 2 kg is designed and fabricated. The dryer consists of six main parts, namely drying chamber, rotary tray, transmission system, heating element, sensory and control system. The methodologies used in this research are idea generation, mechanical modelling (3D), static structural analysis, computer fluid dynamic analysis (CFD) and dryer performance evaluation. In the performance evaluation, the keropok sliced were dried from the initial moisture content (IMC) of 42.26% to the final moisture content (FMC) in the range of 10% to 11% within 6 hours. The keropok sliced were dried at a constant temperature of 40 °C with two different air velocities, 1.5 m/s and 2.0 m/s. The open-sun drying method by using pemidai was also carried out as a comparison. As the results show, the final weight of the keropok sliced when they achieved the required moisture contents are 167.1 gram and 163.5 gram at air velocities of 1.5 m/s and 2.0 m/s respectively. The final moisture content recorded for both of the air velocities are 10.93% and 10.52%. In terms of drying time, the higher velocity of air supplied to the drying chamber is observed to shorten the drying time. According to the results, the moisture content, drying time, weight loss and drying rate of the designed dryer within 6 hours are better than those of the open-sun drying method. The experimental moisture ratios then were fitted with three different theoretical moisture ratio models, namely Newton, Page and Henderson and Pabis. The results show that the Newton model is suitable to represent the thin layer drying behaviour of the keropok . The dryer is expected to improve the drying process of the keropok keping industry. Keywords: Fish cracker, convection dryer, drying, moisture content

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