The objective of this research was to study the influence of drying air velocity characteristics on paddy drying. The pneumatic dryer prototype was used in this study. Test drying 15 kg of Hom Pathum paddy at 22 – 25% initial wet basis moisture content was tested drying under the drying air temperature 80OC until its moisture is 14% wet basis with the two drying air velocity characteristics. The first characteristic of drying air velocity is constant at 12.80 m/s and another is reduced velocity every 15 minutes throughout the test process from 12.80 - 8.44 m/s. Drying in a vertical tube with a diameter of 3.81 cm and height 1 m for study the drying behavior drying rate (DR) specific energy consumption (SEC) and thermal efficiency of drying. The results showed that drying with constant air velocity gives a shorter time higher drying rate lower primary SEC consumption and higher thermal efficiency than drying with reducing air velocity.

The objective of this research was to study of rotary drying of high-moisture long pepper by using a combined hot air and infrared radiation. The experiment was carried out at the drying temperatures of 80 90 and 100 °C infrared power level of 500 W hot air velocity of 2.5 m/s and rotary revolution of 3 6 and 9 rpm. In this study two patterns were examined by the different drying conditions namely 1) hot air drying and 2) combined hot air and infrared radiation drying. The effects of above drying parameters on the change in moisture content of long pepper and specific energy consumption (SEC) of the drying system were investigated. The results showed that the combined hot air and infrared radiation drying was shorter drying time than hot air drying. The lowest total SEC during drying process of 26.77 MJ/kg water when the drying temperatures of 80 °C infrared power level of 500 W hot air velocity of 2.5 m/s and rotary revolution of 3 rpm were used.

Drying an agricultural product with hot air (HA) method causes a long drying time and results in high specific drying energy consumption (SEC). The dried product has high shrinkage percentage and low rehydration. Therefore this research aims to develop dried shiitake mushroom using belt-conveyor combined microwave-hot air drying method (MHB). The shiitake mushroom was dried by MHB at microwave power of 300 W 400 W 500 W and 600 W and air temperature of 65 oC with air velocity of 0.3 m/s and recycled air of 80% and by the HA drying method at air temperature of 65 oC. The samples were dried until their final moisture content less than 11.1% dry basis. The drying kinetics SEC of drying process and quality of dried shiitake mushroom were evaluated. The quality of dried product was considered in terms of color shrinkage rehydration texture water activity and microstructure. The results showed that the shiitake mushroom drying using MHB gave higher drying rate than that of HA drying method leading to short drying time and resulting in low SEC. The drying rate of un-blanched shiitake mushroom was higher than that of blanched shiitake mushroom. Dried shiitake mushroom from MHB drying gave lower values in shrinkage percentages and hardness but higher rehydration and larger pore size than that dried by HA drying. However the color values (L* +a* and +b*) of dried shiitake mushroom in all cases were not significantly different. Meanwhile dried shiitake mushroom from un-blanched case gave lower values in shrinkage percentage and hardness but higher values in all colors and rehydration and larger pore size than those of blanched case.

This research developed a new model to determine the moisture diffusion coefficient for the thin-layer paddy drying with the spouted free-fall bed dryer. The design and construction of the dryer was done to experiment with the drying kinetics. The experiment has studied under conditions of hot air temperature of 60-150 °C the initial paddy mass of 5 - 15 kg and hot air velocity of 19 m/s. The results showed that the higher hot air temperature and the lower initial paddy mass resulted in a significant reduction in drying time. The experimental results were used to calibrate 12 of the most popular thin-layer drying models to find a suitable one considering based on the root mean square error (RMSE) chi-squared value (χ2) and the correlation coefficient (r). It was found that the popular thin layer drying model was able to accurately predict the effect of the moisture ratio considering both the influence of hot air temperature and the initial paddy mass in linear models. The highest accuracy was RMSE = 0.0279 χ2 = 0.00084 and r = 0.9938. In addition the experimental results have been used to synthesize the new diffusion moisture coefficient which is a function of initial paddy mass temperature and drying time. This developed model was based on an exponential function with only 7 model constants. The simulated results observed that the new model achieved the average error only 1.8 percent compared with the best model that uses up to 24 model constants.

The purpose of this research is to develop a hot air dryer using waste heat from a200 liter kiln for drying bananas and to investigate its drying performance. The main parts of the dryer consist of the drying chamber that has dimensions 0.71x0.83x.091 m3 the air circulation system and a heat exchanger which receives waste heat from the exhaust tube and kiln surface. The dryer was developed by designing a drying chamber on the top of a 200 liter kiln to reduce heat lost in the structure and an exhaust gas heat exchanger was developed using groups of copper tubes for increasing then heat transferred to the air. The drying performances were analyzed by measuring specific drying rates and specific energy consumption. Experiments were performed under different temperatures of 60 70 and 80℃ And at a constant velocity of 1.8 ms-1. Eucalyptus was selected as the heat source. Thirty kg of peeled bananas were prepared at an initial moisture content of 241.19±31.50% dry basis and were dried until to final moisture content of 48.47±10.46% dry basis. All experiments were carried out in duplicate. For temperatures of 60 70 and 80 ℃ the ave age specific drying rates were 0.085±0.0004 0.114±0.0009 and 0.1277±0.010 kg water h-1kesolid-1 and the average specific energy consumptions were 1.42±0.055 1.21±0.355 and 1.04±0.074 MJ/kg water respectively. Some dried bananas had burned at a temperature of 80℃ so at temperature of 70 ℃ was the optimal condition in this experiment. This produced good color a high specific drying rate and low specific energy consumption.