Design and Development of an Agricultural and Bio-materials Cabinet Tray Dryer

A locally made agricultural and bio-material dryer to be operated bylocal farmers was designed and developed to reduce Agricultural material wastage and improve their storage conditions. It consists of three units: drying chamber, blower and heat exchanger. The performance test and evaluation were conducted using analysis of variation (ANOVA) using okro, pepper and groundnut as the test materials at an average drying chamber temperature of 50°C for safe drying of the produce. The three crop, (okro, pepper and groundnut) and drying time (9hours), the kilogram weight of the crops decreased with increase in drying time as drying progressed, hence there was no significant different at 5% level of significance in the drying rates of the three crops. The dryer which has a mean drying capacity of 60.3kg per batch with a thermal efficiency of 76.9% and drying rate of 0.041kg/hr, at relative humidity of 35% improved the drying time of the agricultural materials and is recommended for local farmers.