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Drying kinetics and energy analysis of carob seeds (Ceratonia siliqua L.) convective solar drying

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Abstract

The drying process is a fundamental operation in the industry that demands much energy and time, this method is used in order to increase the shelf life of the products as well as the mass and volume during the storage and the transportation. The moisture content permits the deterioration of quality through the microorganisms and the enzymatic reactions. This work aims to study the carob seeds (Ceratonia Siliqua L.) solar drying using a convective solar dryer in order to study and understand the drying kinetics and obtain the characteristic drying curve in different temperatures (50, 60, 70 and 80 °C) and drying air velocities (0.18 and 0.10 m s−1). It was concluded that the increase in the drying temperature reduces the drying time. Six mathematical models were used to appropriately interpret the experimental data; it was found that Verna was the perfect model to represent the drying curves of the carob seeds. The variation of the diffusivity coefficient was found in a range of 1.1968 10−9–4.1482 10−9 m2 s−1, an increase in this coefficient is noticed with the increase in the drying temperature. In order to evaluate the activation energy of the studied product, the Arrhenius relation was called and the average activation energy was found to be 41.46 kJ mol−1. An energy analysis has conducted in order to evaluate the performances of the studied solar dryer. The energy efficiency of the convective dryer was varied in a range of 2.6–4.2%.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the CNRST (National Center of Scientific and Technical Research-Morocco) for providing financial support of this work in the program of Research Excellence Scholarships.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Team of Solar Energy and Aromatic and Medicinal Plants EESPAM, ENS, Marrakech - Laboratory of Processes for Energy and Environment ProcEDE, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco

    Zakaria Tagnamas, Mounir Kouhila, Younes Bahammou, Hamza Lamsyehe, Haytem Moussaoui, Ali Idlimam & Abdelkader Lamharrar

Authors
  1. Zakaria Tagnamas
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  2. Mounir Kouhila
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  3. Younes Bahammou
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  4. Hamza Lamsyehe
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  5. Haytem Moussaoui
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  6. Ali Idlimam
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  7. Abdelkader Lamharrar
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by ZT, YB and MK. The first draft of the manuscript was written by the rest of authors and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Abdelkader Lamharrar.

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Tagnamas, Z., Kouhila, M., Bahammou, Y. et al. Drying kinetics and energy analysis of carob seeds (Ceratonia siliqua L.) convective solar drying. J Therm Anal Calorim 147, 2281–2291 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-021-10632-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-021-10632-6

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