Design and Construction of a Tray Dryer for Groundnut Drying

Abstract

Drying is one of the oldest method of preserving food. Drying implies the removal of water from a product to an acceptance level for marketing, storage or for further processing. The numerous ways of usage of groundnut and its products has led to increase in its demand. However, the traditional method of drying involving exposing the groundnut seeds to sunlight and constantly spreading it to enhance uniform drying is associated with drudgery, unhygienic, time consuming, ineffective and results into high percentage seed losses. A tray dryer was constructed with the aim of improving on the traditional methods commonly used in Nigeria. The dryer can be used to measure drying rates of different varieties of groundnut at different initial moisture contents, drying air temperatures, drying air velocities of grain beds. The effects of different drying temperature, air velocity, can be investigated with the dryer. The dryer shows drying efficiency ranging from 77.54% to 79.32%. Also, the dryer is capable of reducing the moisture content of groundnut seeds of different varieties from 20% to average moisture content of 9% within average time of 7hrs.