Proposal for a solar fruit dryer design with organoleptic properties recovery system

¹ Private University of North (UPN), Trujillo, Perú
² Department of Engineering, Higher School of Engineering, Agri-Food Campus of International Excellence (CeiA3), University of Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain

Abstract

With the passing of time, the demand for dehydrated organic products has increased, ranging from vegetables to fruits, however in the latter efforts to achieve a quality product have led to the use of industrialized systems which depend on the use of fossil fuels or systems that use electric current which greatly increase production costs. At present, various solar dryer models have emerged, having achieved an optimal performance in what corresponds to the processing of vegetables, however in the processes of dehydration of fruits the results have not been satisfactory, due to the loss of its color, taste, aroma and texture (organoleptic properties). Faced with this problem, an innovative design of solar fruit dehydrator is proposed, which has two objectives, the first related to recovering the organoleptic properties through a system of condenzation, cyclic dehydration and the synchronization of the calorific balance, and the second one focused on the improvement of thermal efficiency, through the use of some heat piles and a trombe wall. The heat transfer fluid was improved, adding silver nanoparticles (silver nanospheres), which were synthesized using the green chemistry method; the efficiency of the heat transfer fluid was increased by 30%.