Shredded-Coconut Drying by Spouted-Bed Technique for Cold Press Coconut Oil Production

This research was carried out to determine the optimum drying conditions of shredded-coconut using a developed spouted-bed dryer. The samples of shredded-coconut with average initial moisture content of 52%wb were used in the experiment. The drying air temperature of 60, 70 and 80oC and initial shredded-coconut in bed of 0.5, 1 and 1.5 kg were set as drying conditions. The drying rate (DR), specific energy consumption (SEC), color of dried product, efficiency of oil compression and qualities of coconut oil were determined to evaluate the performance of drying. The results indicated that the most suitable drying condition was 70oC, 1 kg of initial bed since it gave the highest of efficiency of oil compression of 52.23% with SEC of 8.95 MJ kg-1, 1.41 kg h-1 of DR, the color of dried product was white and qualities of oil were in standard of Asian and Pacific Coconut Community.