PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A SAWDUST BRIQUETTE POWERED DRYER FOR PEPPER PRESERVATION

Abstract

towards reducing agricultural wastes encountered due to lack of proper storage of products. This study is targeted to improve the storage of pepper by designing and fabricating a sawdust briquette powered cabinet dryer capable to dry products at a regulated temperature and achieve efficient drying in lesser time, lesser contamination, and retaining of high quality of the products after drying. Briquette was produced by drying sawdust, carbonizing and moulding to serve as fuel for the dryer while a temperature regulator and a blower were incorporated in the design to aid the drying to reduce loss of nutrient. The dryer has a capacity of 1.576kg and results obtained from the performance evaluation carried out on the dryer showed that, it was able to dry pepper within a period of 4 hours 30minutes. The efficiency of the dryer was based on input and output of heat which was 70% and the dryer needed 0.22kg of sawdust briquette to dry the products thereby attaining a final moisture content of 10%. The study recommends that the combustion chamber should have an automated door to regulate the influx of oxygen which helps in combustion and study should be carried out on the effective disposal of ash from the combustion chamber when drying is in progress.