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Study of the drying of Moringa Oleifera in solar dryer in Cambodia

par Khoun, Rithymean;Feller, A;Hautphenne, Catherine ;Debaste, Frédéric
Référence International Congress of Chemical an Process Engineering (21: 23-27 Août 2014: Prague, République Tchèque)
Publication Non publié, 2014-08-24

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Résumé :

Moringa Oleifera is a fast growing tree that is indigenous in south eastern Asia. The dried leaf of this plant is used in traditional medicine as well as in hot beverage. It is also considered as a high protein source for local population having a protein depleted diet [1]. Nowadays in Cambodia the drying of leaf is realized using direct exposition to sun light in a basic an empiric way during more than 48h. This lengthy process induces loss of nutritional quality of and a risk of dust and microbial contamination of the product.This work deals with a first step toward the development of a technique for controlled sun based drying realizable in rural conditions at a scale suitable for local farmer (batch of 10 kg of fresh product per day).First, a suitable cabinet solar dryer was dimensioned following a rational modelling approach [2]. It was then designed, installed, instrumented (temperature, pressure, flow rate, humidity and inlet solar flux) and tested for heat transfer performance without any drying material. TIt allows a sustainable air inlet of 0.6 kg/s at 55°C with just 10 fans of 22W each.10 full scale tests of drying of Moringa Oleifera leafs show that 12 kg of fresh product can be dried in an hygienically acceptable process over an average day of 8 hour of partially cloudy sky. Figure 1b highlight the evolution of the leaf water content during a typical drying experiment at different positions in the dryer. This Figure allows seeing that the drying is practically complete in the entire dryer after 8 hour but that non negligible spatial heterogeneities are observed due to channelling of the air entering the drying zone. The next step of optimization of the capacity of the installation is the reduction of these heterogeneities before considering a duplication of the device in remote Cambodian area.