STUDY ON THE PERFORMANCE OF DRYING MACHINE BASED ON SUPERABSORBENT POLYMER FOR DRYING MEDICINAL PLANTS AND COFFEE BEANS

• Main Author: Rachmi Satyodriyani, Kintan
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/65518
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The super absorbent polymer (PSA) drying machine has been successfully constructed and the perfomance has been tested by drying medicinal plants and coffee beans. These two ingredients were chosen because the market demand for simplisia and coffee will continue to increase. These materials have been used in the PSA drying machine in the previous experiment so that a comparative study on the performance of the two drying machine can be carried out. In the previous experiment, the drying of medicinal plants was carried out using one drying chamber. While the drying of coffee beans is done with one and three drying chambers. This is intended to increase efficiency and drying capacity by utilizing good air space before being discharged into the environment, so it is necessary to optimize performance in the form of modifying the number of drying chambers that need to be installed. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of drying machine modifications on drying time, energy efficiency, and investment in drying machine investment, in order to obtain the optimum condition for producing simplisia and coffee beans in large quantity and good quality. This study was carried out in the series of drying machine with a drying chamber and a polygel cabinet as the main equipment. Variation in the modification of the drying machine are the elimination of heater, the elimination of superabsorbent polymer, and the addition of two drying chambers in series, while variation of raw materials are ginger, turmeric, greater galangal, finger root, chilli, lesser galangal, and coffee beans. The simplisia of the dried medicinal plants will be characterized by analysis of moisture content and physical structure. The results on the perfomance of PSA drying machine show that drying using PSA save drying time of 2 to 4 hours. Drying using a heater save drying time of 50 to 53 hours. Drying with the addition of two chambers can save up to 7 hours. In addition, it can also save fuel energy for LPG gas 14.29%, electricity 19.05%, increasing the value of GPM 13.00%, NPV 120.28%, IRR 51.99%, and reducing the value of PBP 34.56%.