Sunflower seeds and oil in food and agricultural processing are of great importance. Dried sunflower petals are the most important parts of the sunflower plant that have economic value. Thin-layer drying experiments were performed in a laboratory scale hot-air dryer. The results indicated that with increasing drying temperature and air velocity, time of drying reduces and in most cases, the logarithmic model had the best performance for modeling the drying kinetics. The calculated values of the effective moisture diffusivity varied from 3.16627 ×10-13 to 1.32860 ×10-12 m2 s-1 and the values of the activation energy for air velocities of 0.4 and 0.8 m s-1 were equal to 51.21 and 42.3 kJ mol-1, respectively. Also, to verify whether the production and sale of sunflower petals can be cost effective, economic analysis was done. This analysis showed that drying of sunflower petals is profitable process and the generated revenue can even surpass the revenue from the sale of sunflower seeds.
Thin Layer Drying Kinetics of Wheat Grain in a Convective Hot-Air Dryer
