Abstract

Nowadays, drying process has taken an important role in food and agricultural production fields. Drying process is necessary to prepare the products for consumption and storage. There are various drying process techniques, point from the technological and process technique. Fluidized bed drying is usually preferred, because of high heat and mass transfer coefficient. In this work, fluidized bed was used in the experiments. The scope of this work is the exergy and energy analysis of fluidized bed drying of bean and chickpea. Drying process was employed at different temperatures and velocities for both products. Exergy analysis was accomplished to determine the type and magnitude of exergy losses during the drying process by applying the second law of thermodynamics. As a result, the parameters that affected the exergy efficiency were determined. As the exergy efficiency is evaluated, it can be seen that it is proportional to drying air temperature and velocity. Also, it was found that the efficiency for the same drying air temperature (47.1°C), is between 56 to 65% for bean and it is between 45 to 62% for chickpea.

Key words:  Exergy and energy analysis, fluidized bed drying, drying.