Uji Performansi Alat Pengering Tipe Rak dan Pengaruh Perlakuan Awal terhadap Mutu Jahe Kering (Zingiber officinale Rosc.)

Abstract

Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) is one of spices and medicinal plant which has high economic value and have been widely recognized by the Indonesian people. Fresh ginger has moisture content between 85-91% wet basis causes reduction quality of ginger if it is not eventually to be processed or dried. Generally, farmers and traders dried the ginger by using sun drying which require a lot of time, so that the artificial drying is needed to produce dried ginger with better quality and can shorten the drying time. The objectives of the research are to conduct the performance assessment of Sunbeam Food Dehydrator, which is rack-type dryer that using electrical energy as heat source; to assess the effect of immersion in lime solution (Ca(OH)2) at concentration of 2%, 4% and 6% to the quality of dried ginger; as well as studying the temperature distribution and air flow patterns in the dryer using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The results of the research showed that the dryer has capacity about 1kg of ginger slice and drying efficiency of 25.09%. It also shown that the immersion in lime solution gave a significant effect on increasing ash content and lightness of dried ginger, but it gave no significant effect on essential oil content of dried ginger. The treatment of immersion in 6% concentration of lime solution produce dry ginger with ash content that beyond of quality standard limit. The simulation of temperature and air flow patterns inside the dryer showed the accuracy of 97.09% and resulting linear regression of the relationship between measurement temperature and simulation temperature of 0.943. This shows that the CFD simulation gives good results in predicting the distribution of air temperature and air flow patterns inside the dryer.