Mass Transfer, Energy-Exergy Analysis, and Mathematical Modeling of Chili Pepper During Drying

There are no literature data on the effects of air velocity and relative humidity on moisture diffusivity, mass transfer coefficient, and energy-exergy analysis of chili pepper during cabinet-tray hot-air drying. This study tends to address this gap by presenting comprehensive drying kinetic, energy, and exergy analyses of a cabinet-tray hot-air drying for red chili pepper. Drying was conducted at varying levels of air temperature (40-70 oC), air velocity (0.5-2.0 m/s), and relative humidity (60-75%). The effect of drying conditions on drying time, drying coefficient, lag factor, drying efficiency, moisture ratio, effective moisture diffusivity, mass transfer coefficient, total energy consumption (TEC), specific energy consumption (SEC), energy utilization ratio (EUR), heat loss, energy efficiency, exergy loss, exergy efficiency, exergetic improvement potential (EIP), and exergy sustainability index (ESI)) was evaluated. Five different mass transfer models (Dincer-Dost, Bi-Di, Bi-S, Bi-G, and Bi-Re) were applied to determine the mass transfer parameters. A new drying mathematical model was developed for the prediction of drying kinetic, energy, and exergy parameters. Effective moisture diffusivity values of 1.58×10–8 - 5.10×10–8 m2/s and mass transfer coefficient values of 0.053×10–6 - 8.79×10–6 m/s over the drying conditions range were respectively obtained. The TEC, SEC, and EUR achieved over the range of drying conditions in the course of drying were in the range of 43.56-77.36 MJ, 49.0-87.02 MJ/kg, and 0.035-0.325, respectively. Heat loss and exergy loss varied from 0.16 to 2.39 MJ and from 0.026 to 0.622 kW, respectively. Drying, energy, and exergetic efficiency values obtained varied in the range of 2.80-8.25%, 2.69-7.91%, and 73-94.5%, respectively. EIP and the ESI values varied from 0.0068-0.114 kW and 3.70-18.18, respectively. The developed multivariate linear regression model provided an innovative model to predict drying kinetic, energy, and exergy parameters.