Reduction of Red Chili Drying Time Through Blanching
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Roughly half of the 7.6 million smallholder red chili farmers in India live in poverty. The Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE), our project sponsor, is working to increase farmer income by replacing traditional sun drying with greenhouse drying. The Advanced Adaptable Agriculture System (A3S) greenhouse developed by PIE currently realizes drying times of 7-9 days via a thermal storage system that provides heating at night. Not only does this cut down chili drying time from the 25+ days realized through traditional sun drying, but it also reduces the risk of spoilage through rot and fungal infections and improves final produce quality. Adding a blanching step in which chilis are immersed in water heated to 88 - 95ºC for three to ten seconds will flash melt the kinetic wax that prevents chili dehydration, further reducing drying time to three to five days while further increasing the quality and value of the chilis. The blanching process must have a throughput of 500 kg of chilis per hour, be inexpensive to build and operate, and meet a rigid set of safety requirements. This paper examines our team’s approach and methodology to meet these requirements. Ultimately, our solution was the Waterslide. Red chilis enter our slide, which is approximately 85cm long and 30 cm wide and full of 6cm of water at 90ºC, where a water wheel and rotating drum ensure that water is circulating and that the red chilis are completely submerged, respectively. We conducted throughput, blanching time, and blanching temperature experiments to ensure our design met all requirements. Our experimental results and accompanying heat transfer model simulations validate that the Waterslide can be scaled to size, while meeting the necessary requirements, and therefore should be investigated further as an effective blanching process.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | 2021 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Evans, Chloe |
|---|---|
| Author | Regalado, Cesar |
| Author | Rogel, Gio |
| Author | Schmidt, Caitlyn |
| Advisor | Cohen, Shoshanah |
| Advisor | Traylor, Amelia |
| Advisor | Machala, Michael |
| Sponsor | Precourt Institute for Energy |
Subjects
| Subject | Blanching |
|---|---|
| Genre | Student project report |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Evans, Chloe; Regalado, Cesar; Rogel, Gio; Schmidt, Caitlyn. (2021). Reduction of Red Chili Drying Time Through Blanching. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/zf446rd5271
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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