Development of a General Drying Model of Red Pepper

고추의 범용(汎用) 건조모형(乾燥模型) 개발(開發)에 관한 연구(硏究)

Drying process of red pepper is very important in terms of drying cost and quality of the end product. Recently, many studies on red pepper drying have been performed. Nevertheless, an optimum drying condition is not established yet. Drying characteristics of red pepper is much affected by drying factors such as variety and initial state of red pepper as well as by environmental drying factors such as temperature and relative humidity of drying air. Various varieties of red pepper are being cultivated and the initial state of red pepper at harvest is very ambiguous. For this reason, it is very costly and time-consuming to establish an optimum drying condition of red pepper by experiment. A general drying model to descirbe a drying process has not been developed due to diversity of drying characteristics of red pepper. This study was, therefore, performed to develop a general drying model describing a drying process of red pepper. The results from this study are summarized as follows. 1. A basic model was established to develop an appropriate mositure content model and temperature model describing a drying process of red pepper, and the basic model was validated with experimental data. 2. The bone dry weight of fruit and mositure content were accepted satisfactorily as parameter to define the arbitrary red pepper. 3. The equilibrium moisture content of red pepper was found out to be different according to the variety of red pepper, air temperature and relative humidity. Also, the EMC model was developed using the parameters of air temperature, relative humidity and bone dry weight of fruit. 4. A general drying model for red pepper was developed, parameters of which were expressed as the function of drying factors related with drying phenomena. The developed drying model was found out to describe well the drying process of red pepper.