Development of a mechanical rotary tea dryer | |
| Author | Tanabordee Ruangrod |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no.AE-05-11 |
| Subject(s) | Drying apparatus Agricultural machinery--Design and construction Tea--Drying |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Environment, Resources and Development |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no. AE-05-11 |
| Abstract | This study aimed to design and develop a small scale mechanical rotary drier to suit small and medium scale tea growers, and to evaluate the performance and the cost effectiveness. The dryer consisted of five main parts; frame, rotary drum, power transmission, heat source and cover set. The different heat source combinations were used to evaluate and optimize the heating characteristics by varying the drying conditions, which were temperature and time period. The investigation was done to measure the energy consumption and moisture removal rate. This tea dryer showed promising results for small and medium scale tea grower requirement of nearly 100 kg/day rate, and could be extendable with some changes in the design parameters. The drying temperature of 110 °C had the highest efficiency in terms of a short retention time for tea drying at the optimum tea moisture removal rate compared to other drying temperatures used in the experiments. At the drying temperature of 110 °C, the experiment-3 with combine infrared and heater system showed the highest energy consumption when compared to the experiment-I (34.5`%) with fn-coil electric heater and experiment-2 with infrared heater (50.2%). In addition, the experiment-3 showed highest tea dryer held capacity than the experiment-I (7090) and 2 (55%). Specific moisture extraction rate (SMER) of experiment-3 was higher than experiments-2 (19.39'0) and -3 (50.7%), whereas specific energy consumption (SEC) of experiment-2 was lower than that with experiment-1 (19.3%) and experiment-3 (50.7%). Finally, the fabrication cost was amounted to be around 2500 US$, affordable to smaller tea growers. The cost analysis based on energy consumption showed that the operating cost of combined infrared and heater system was at 1.42 $/hr and lowest of electrical consumption in infrared system was at 1.19 $/hr. The operating cost of the mechanical rotary dryer- with combine heaters and with infrared heater alone in this study had much lower operating costs than the traditional tea dryer (12.5 $/hr.), with a difference of about 88.64%, 90.48% respectively |
| Year | 2005 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. AE-05-11 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Environment, Resources, and Development (SERD) |
| Department | Department of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (Former title: Department of Food Agriculture, and BioResources (DFAB)) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Agricultural and Food Engineering (AE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Jayasuriya, H.P.W. |
| Examination Committee(s) | Salokhe, V. M.;Athapol Noomhorm; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Royal Thai Government Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2005 |