Diseño y construcción de un deshidratador eléctrico de frutas de 20 bandejas para un sistema de producción agroindustrial

Abstract

The main objective of this work was to design and build an electric fruit dehydrator for an agroindustrial production system using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology to evaluate the needs and priorities of the market regarding the technical parameters required by a fruit dehydrator in the contemporary market and offering as the best alternative an electric fruit dehydrator using forced convection powered by a 220 V line with rotating wheel supports, trays with electro-welded mesh for better heat transfer and an easy-to-operate control panel. With these parameters, the thermal and materialization design of the equipment was carried out using computer-aided drawing (CAD) software; the geometry of the equipment was designed with the parameters and requirements previously obtained in order to be able to offer detailed plans of the equipment for its subsequent manufacturing. Once the equipment was physically obtained, validation tests were carried out using the finite element method provided by computer-aided engineering software to get the temperature of the walls and the chamber of the equipment, verifying that the temperature is distributed uniformly and that the profiles selected to support the equipment are within a safety range both in terms of resistance and rigidity. With the results obtained, the respective testing protocol for the machine was developed, where the most critical parameters of the equipment were evaluated, giving satisfactory results. It is concluded that the methodology and design used were appropriate since they allowed us to obtain a fruit dehydrator with the parameters desired by the market, corroborating its performance with good results. It is recommended to work within the temperature range used to obtain good quality dehydrated products.