Mathematical modeling of thin layer plum fruits in solar tunnel drier

Abstract

Drying of thin layer plum fruits was studied using a solar tunnel dryer under the ecological conditions of Isparta, Turkey. An experimental solar dryer with a flat plate solar collector has been constructed at the Department of Agricultural Machinery and Technologies Engineering at Suleyman Demirel University. During the drying process, solar irradiation, drying air temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity were measured constantly in different parts of the dryer. The change of plum fruits mass was measured daily. In this study, the fresh plum fruit samples were selected, sorted, washed in water. The drying characteristic curves were evaluated against ten mathematical models and the Two Term model was found to be the best descriptive model for solar tunnel drying of thin layer plum fruit samples.