CONSTRUCTION OF AN ELECTRIC DRYER FOR DRYING OF AGRICULTURAL MATERIALS

To reduce agricultural material waste and enhance storage conditions an electric drier was designed and built. There are three parts to it: a drying chamber a blower and a heat exchanger. Analysis of variation (ANOVA) was used to test and evaluate the performance of the test materials which included okro pepper and groundnut at an average drying chamber temperature of 50oC for safe drying of the produce. The kilogram weight of the crops declined as drying advanced as the three crops (okro pepper and groundnut) and drying time (9 hours) increased indicating that there was no significant difference in the drying rates of the three crops at the 5% level of significance. The drier improved the drying time of agricultural materials and is suggested for laboratory usage. It has a mean drying capacity of 60.3kg per batch a thermal efficiency of 76.9% and a drying rate of 0.041kg/hr at a relative humidity of 35 percent.