Performance Analysis of Heat-pump Dryer to Dry Mushroom

This study investigates the performance of a heat pump dryer. Taking the mushroom as the research object, a Heat-Pump Dryer (HPD) was designed and manufactured. Through the measure of air temperature and air humidity in the drying chamber, it shows that air distribution is more uniform in the lower part, drying process lasted 670 min, 90 kg of fresh mushroom ware load in the drying chamber, finally 75.2 kg of water was evaporated and same time 33.2 kW·h of electricity was consumed. The average value of Specific Moisture Extraction Rate (SMER) is 2.3 kg/kW·h for the whole heat pump dryer, if only calculated the power consumption of compressor, the SMER was 3.5 kg/kW·h.