Application of Thermal Energy Storage into Food Drying Technology Raditya Helmi Fakhruddin 1*, Mochamad Bagus Hermanto 1, La Choviya Hawa 1, Yoshinori Nagase 2, Osamu Ohnishi 2, Ken Masuya 2, and Ryuusuke Kawamura 2
1 Department of Biosystem Engineering, Universitas Brawijaya, Jalan Veteran, Malang 65145, Indonesia
2 Mechanical Engineering Program, University of Miyazaki, Gakuenkibanadainishi 1 Chome-1, 889-2155 Miyazaki, Japan
*Email: radityahf1987[at]gmail.com
Abstract
The food and agricultural sectors must improve and ensure the quality of food production to anticipate challenges. One of the solutions is drying food to prolong shelf life using dryer. Main part of dryer is chamber, and it is important to design the drying chamber that suitable for food drying. The usage of PCM is common nowadays, it can improve drying rate due to food parameters. This study is conducted to design drying chamber, acknowledge the effect on usage of PCM on the drying chamber, and its effect on the temperature change, RH, moisture content, and color changes of banana as food sample. The result of this study is that the design of cylindrical drying chamber with 3 trays can be used to dry bananas. Besides, the usage of PCM can retain heat within the chamber and maintain low relative humidity (RH) compared without using PCM, which is suitable for food drying because it requires a stable temperature, not too low RH, and no drastic change in temperature and RH. The use of different melting points of PCM for drying banana shows that PCM 70 results in low moisture content and high color change indicates that drying process occurred properly.
Keywords: Banana- Drying Chamber- Food Drying- Phase Change Material
