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ENERGY AND EXERGY ANALYSES ON DRYING OF OLIVE LEAVES ( OLEA EUROPAEA L.) IN TRAY DRIER
Author(s) -
ERBAY ZAFER,
ICIER FILIZ
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of food process engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.507
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1745-4530
pISSN - 0145-8876
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-4530.2009.00505.x
Subject(s) - olea , tray , exergy , pulp and paper industry , olive leaf , olive trees , horticulture , environmental science , chemistry , botany , food science , process engineering , biology , engineering
Recently, olive leaves have a high potential for industrial exploitation in the food industry. The main process in olive leaf treatment is drying. Because drying is an energy‐intensive process, analyzing and improving the drying systems is important. In this study, olive leaves were dried in a tray drier and the performance of the drying process was evaluated using energy and exergy analyses methods. The effects of the drying air temperature and the velocity on the performance of the drying process were discussed. While the energy utilization ratio values varied between 14.05% and 26.21%, the exergetic efficiencies varied between 55.95% and 75.12%. It was inferred that exergetic efficiencies increased as the drying air temperature decreased and the drying air velocity increased. They were influenced mainly by the drying air temperature.PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Although olive trees cover ∼8 million ha in the whole world and scientific studies show the importance of olive leaves, there are few examples of using olive leaves industrially. The main process in olive leaf treatment is drying, and there has been no information on the thermodynamic analysis of the drying of olive leaves in the open literature according to the authors' knowledge. Thermodynamic analysis is an important step for designing and optimizing the olive leaf treatment. It is believed that such a study would contribute the industrial exploitation of olive leaves.