Diseño y construcción de una deshidratadora para frutas cítricas con funcionamiento semiautomático y alimentada con gas licuado de petróleo

Abstract

When a crop is booming, it is often difficult for producers to market it directly and preserve it for long periods. The lack of preservation methods prevents products from being preserved. Therefore, the objective of the work was to design and build a dehydrator for citrus fruits with semi-automatic operation and powered by liquefied petroleum gas. For this, the QFD methodology and the morphological matrix were used for the pre-design, including the types of controllers and the magnitude of the dehydration chamber, the system consists of a thermal and mechanical design where the optimal capacity and operating temperatures are achieved. In addition, the construction was carried out with AISI 304 and AISI 430 stainless steel materials. Finally, the MIL-STD 105E acceptance sampling tests were carried out, which are based on obtaining data to check if the result corresponds to the acceptance of the design or not following both national regulations such as NTE INEN 2996 and international regulations such as SENASA, CORPOICA, establishing a minimum humidity percentage to be achieved through performance tests. Obtaining, as a result, a humidity percentage of 10%, for all the fruits tested and compared with the estimated time inside the drying chamber, thanks to the time-temperature controller and the help of a solenoid valve, it was possible to manipulate these variables, which are the most important in the investigation. Concluding that the construction of the dehydrating machine was carried out following the parameters calculated in the previous stages, then the performance tests were carried out applying the MIL ST 105 acceptance sampling for the fruit lots, which established the sample size, with which I can check the quality of the product.