Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1188–1193

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Performance analysis of drying of green olive in a tray dryer

a,*,1 b
Neslihan Colak , Arif Hepbasli
a
Solar Energy Institute, Ege University, 35100 Bornova, Izmir, Turkey
b
Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ege University, 35100 Bornova, Izmir, Turkey

Received 26 January 2006; received in revised form 27 August 2006; accepted 14 September 2006
Available online 7 November 2006

Abstract

This paper deals with the performance evaluation of a single layer drying process of green olives in a tray dryer using exergy analysis
method. Green olive was used as the test material being dried. Drying process was realized at four different drying air temperatures (40,
50, 60 and 70 °C) and a constant relative humidity of 15%. The effects of temperatures and mass flow rates were investigated. Maximum
exergy efficiency of the drying chamber was obtained at a temperature of 70 °C and a drying air mass flow rate of 0.015 kg/s with
0.0004 kg/s of olive. The exergy efficiency values were found to be in the range of 68.65%–91.79% from 40 °C to 70 °C with drying
air mass flow rates of 0.01 kg/s–0.015 kg/s.
Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Drying; Exergy analysis; Green olive

1. Introduction Sahin, 2004). Exergy analysis has been applied successfully

Most of the olive production is destined for olive oil;
however, a considerable part of its processed to different
types of olives for direct human consumption. Among
these products, fermented and black table olives are very
important products for South Europe, including Turkey.
According to FAO (2003), 6,000,000 tons of table olives
are produced worldwide. Spain, Greece, Italy, Tunisia
and Turkey together, which are important olive oil produc-
ers in the Mediterranean basin, have 97% of worldwide
olive oil production (Lopez-Villalta, 1998). Amount of
olive production in Turkey is estimated to be
1,800,000 tons (DIE, 2002).
Exergy analyses can reveal whether or not and by how
much it is possible to design more efficient thermal systems
by reducing the sources of existing inefficiencies (Dincer &
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 232 388 4000x1918 17; fax: +90 232
388 8562.
E-mail addresses: neslihan.colak@ege.edu.tr (N. Colak), arif.hepba-
sli@ege.edu.tr (A. Hepbasli).
1
On leave: Food Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering,
Pamukkale University, 20020 Camlik, Denizli, Turkey.
to various areas of engineering applications (Szargut, Mor-
ris, & Stewart, 1988).
During the past few decades, thermodynamic analyses,
particularly exergy analyses, have appeared to be an essen-
tial tool for system design, analyses and optimization of
thermal systems (Dincer & Sahin, 2004). For evaluating
the performance of food systems, energy analysis method
has been widely used, while the studies on exergy analysis
are relatively few in numbers. The studies conducted on
exergy analyses of food systems may be reviewed in two
groups as follows: (i) Exergy analyses of various food pro-
cesses in general (i.e., Balkan, Colak, & Hepbasli, 2005;
Bayrak, Midilli, & Nurveren, 2003; Tekin & Bayramoglu,
1998; Topic, 1995) and (ii) exergy analyses of food drying
(i.e., Akpinar, 2004, Akpinar, Midilli, & Bicer, 2005,
2006; Dincer & Sahin, 2004; Midilli & Kucuk, 2003; Syah-
rul, Hamdullahpur, & Dincer, 2002).
Topic (1995) presented a mathematical model for exergy
analyses of an industrial system for a high temperature for-
age drying. Tekin and Bayramoglu (1998) studied about
exergy loss minimization analyses of a sugar production
process from a sugar beet. Bayrak et al. (2003) performed
energy and exergy analyses of sugar production stages.

0260-8774/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2006.09.017
 N. Colak, A. Hepbasli / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1188–1193 1189

Nomenclature

C specific heat, kJ kg1 K1 Subscripts

E_ rate of net energy transfer, kJ s1 a air
_
Ex exergy rate, kJ s1 b boundary
h specific enthalpy, kJ kg1 c carbohydrate
I_ rate of irreversibility (exergy destroyed), kJ s1 da drying air
IP_ rate of improvement potential, kJ s1 dest destroyed, destruction
m_ mass flow rate, kg s1 e energy
P pressure, kPa evap evaporation
Q_ heat transfer rate, kJ s1 ex exergetic, exergy
R gas constant, J kg1 K1 f fat
S_ rate of entropy, kJ s1 K1 fi fiber
s specific entropy, kJ kg1 K1 gen generation
T temperature, °C or K in inlet
t time, s k location
W_ work rate, kJ s1 L loss
X weight fraction of dry matter, dimensionless m material
out outlet
Greek symbols p protein
g exergy efficiency, dimensionless v vapor
w flow exergy, kJ kg1 s w water
w specific humidity, g g1 0 restricted dead state

Balkan et al. (2005) conducted a study on the performance
evaluation of a triple effect evaporator with forward feed
using exergy analysis method.
Syahrul et al. (2002) carried out a thermodynamic anal-
ysis of the fluidized bed drying process of moist particles to
optimize the input and output conditions using energy and
exergy models. Midilli and Kucuk (2003) performed the
energy and exergy analyses of the drying process of shelled
and unshelled pistachios using a solar drying cabinet. Din-
cer and Sahin (2004) developed a new model for thermody-
namic analyses, in terms of exergy, of a drying process.
Akpinar (2004) studied on energy and exergy analyses of
drying of red pepper slices in a convective type dryer. Akp-
inar et al. (2005, 2006) performed energy and exergy anal-
yses of potato and pumpkin drying processes via cyclone
type dryer.
This study performs an exergy analysis of thin layer dry-
ing of green olive in a tray dryer. The dried green olive is a
new product, which is proposed as snack food.
2. Materials and procedure
2.1. Experimental set-up
Drying experiments were performed in a laboratory
scale dryer constructed in the Department of Agricultural
Machinery, Faculty of Agriculture, Ege University, Izmir,
Turkey (Gunhan, Demir, Hancioglu, & Hepbasli, 2005;
Ongen, Sargın, Tetik, & Köse, 2005; Yagcioglu, Demir,
& Gunhan, 2001). The dryer consists of mainly three sub-
systems, namely (a) air supply unit, (b) drying unit with
heater and humidifier, and (c) data acquisition and elec-
tronic control unit.
Temperature control, data acquisition and storage as
well as the general supervision of the unit, start-up and
shut down electric heaters, injecting hot water into the air
stream and circulating cold water through the cooling
tower are done by the GENIE data acquisition software.
2.2. Experimental procedure
Measurements were performed to determine exergy effi-
ciency of the system. Before starting experiments, the sys-
tem was run for at least one hour to obtain steady-state
conditions.
Olive samples (Domat variety) were obtained locally.
They were calibrated (140–180 particles/kg) and stored
overnight at T = (10 ± 2) °C before processing. The proce-
dure for preparing the product studied consists of treating
the fruits with 2% NaOH solution, which hydrolyses the
bitter glycoside oleuropein and increases the permeability
of the olive skin, followed by water washes to remove the
excess alkali. Subsequently, a 7% (w/v) NaCl solution is
added to the fruits, in which they undergo spontaneous lac-
tic acid fermentation (Fernandez-Diez et al., 1985). When
the fermentation was completed acidity and brine concen-
tration were kept constant during storage. After the fer-
mentation process, stones were removed. The amount of
olive to be dried is 4.48 kg.
After the dryer reached steady-state conditions, the
olives were put on the tray of dryer and left to dry. Drying
experiments were carried out at four temperatures (40, 50,
1190 N. Colak, A. Hepbasli / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1188–1193

60 and 70 °C) in order to evaluate the effect of air temper- Table 1

ature on the drying process. Drying air velocity was kept Total uncertainties of the measured parameters and experimental results
constant at 1 m/s and relative humidity was maintained Description Unit Total uncertainty
at 15%. Initial temperature of olive is 18 °C and inlet water (%)
content is 76.29% (wet basis). Drying was continued until Temperature of drying air °C 1.59
the mass of the samples reached a constant value. During Temperature of product °C 1.59
Boundary temperature of drying °C 1.59
the experiments, ambient temperature and relative humid- chamber
ity, inlet and outlet temperatures of drying air in the dryer Mass flow rate of air kg s1 3.00
chamber were recorded. Mass flow rate of product kg s1 1.00
Moisture content of olive fruit was determined by Relative humidity of drying air % 0.10
AOAC method at 70 °C and 400 mmHg in a vacuum oven. Water content of product % 1.00
Enthalpy of drying air kJ kg1 0.10
Oil content was analyzed by using Abencor system and cal- Entropy of drying air kJ kg1 K1 0.10
culated as mass fraction of oil in %. Protein (Nx6.25) was Specific heat of product kJ kg1 K1 0.10
determined as total nitrogen according to the Kjeldahl Entropy of product kJ kg1 K1 0.10
method with the addition of Kjeltabs ST as catalyst. The
salt content of samples was analyzed by using the Mohr
method (AOAC, 1975) (Ongen et al., 2005).
I P_ ¼ ð1  gÞðEx _ out Þ
_ in  Ex ð4Þ
3. Analysis
3.3. Determination of thermal properties of olive
3.1. Uncertainty analysis
3.3.1. Determination of specific heats
Uncertainty analysis is needed to prove the accuracy of In this study, the specific heat for foods was determined
the experiments. An uncertainty analysis was performed using the relations proposed by Choi and Okos (1986).
using the method described by Holman (1994). In the pres- X
C¼ CiX i ð5Þ
ent study, the temperatures, pressures and flow rates were
measured with appropriate instruments clarified before. with the specific heat of pure components given as (Rah-
The total uncertainties of these parameters calculated are man, 1995).
given in Table 1.
C ¼ C w X w þ C p X p þ C f X f þ C c X c þ C fi X fi þ C ash X ash ð6Þ

3.2. Exergy balance and exergy improvement potential The composition of olive which used in the calculation of
equations specific heat is presented in Table 2.

The general exergy balance can be expressed in the rate 3.3.2. Determination of entropies
form as The specific entropy of olive at the inlet temperature
X X X (Tm1) is calculated as (Syahrul et al., 2002)
_ in 
Ex _ out ¼
Ex _ dest or
Ex
  sm1  sm0 ¼ C m1 lnðT m1 =T m0 Þ ð7Þ
X T0 _ X
1 Qk  W_ þ m_ in w where Tm0 is the reference temperature, which is taken to
Tk
X be 15 °C in this study.
 _ dest
m_ out w ¼ Ex ð1Þ
w ¼ ðh  h0 Þ  T 0 ðs  s0 Þ ð2Þ 3.4. Performing exergy analysis

The exergy destroyed or the irreversibility may be Total exergy inflow, outflow and losses of the tray and
expressed as follows: the drying chamber were estimated based on the exergy
_ dest ¼ T 0 S_ gen
I_ ¼ Ex ð3Þ analysis, which determines the exergy values at steady-state
points and the reason of exergy variation for the process.
where S_ gen is the rate of entropy.
Van Gool (1997) has also proposed that maximum
Table 2
improvement in the exergy efficiency for a process or sys- The composition of olives used (Ongen et al., 2005)
tem is obviously achieved when the exergy loss or irrevers-
Components Mass fraction (%)
ibility ðEx_ in  Ex
_ out Þ is minimized. Consequently, he
Water 76.29
suggested that it is useful to employ the concept of an exer-
Oil 14.67
getic ‘’improvement potential’’when analyzing different pro- Protein 1.13
cesses or sectors of the economy. This improvement Carbohydrate 3.32
potential in the rate form, denoted IP, _ is given by (Ham- Fibre 4.09
mond & Stapleton, 2001) Ash 0.50
 N. Colak, A. Hepbasli / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1188–1193 1191

To evaluate the entropy of moist air, the contribution of The effect of hot air drying on the quality characteristics
each component in the mixture is determined at the mix- of green olives was investigated by Ongen et al. (2005). In
ture temperature and the partial pressure of the component this study, it was reported that samples dried at 70 °C had
(Syahrul et al., 2002): significantly different color as compared to other tempera-
 
Pa Pv ture applications because of increasing in the degree of
sda ¼ sa  Ra ln þ w sv  Rv ln ð8Þ browning. Ongen et al. (2005) also studied on the quality
P0 P0
characteristics of the oil after drying process. Based on
Exergy balance equation for the tray dryer is,
the composition, color, oil and sensory analyses, drying
_ m2  Ex
Ex _ m1 ¼ Ex
_ da1  Ex
_ da2 þ Ex
_ evap  Ex
_ loss  Ex
_ dest ð9Þ of green olives at 50 °C gave the acceptable final product.
The exergy analyses of a single layer drying process of
The specific exergies at the inlet (wm1 ) of the material
green olives were performed by using data obtained from
and with a stream of drying air entering the dryer (wda1)
the experiments. The results obtained from these calcula-
are calculated as follows, respectively (Syahrul et al., 2002)
tions are presented in Figs. 1–4 and Table 3, while they
wm1 ¼ ðhm1  hm0 Þ  T 0 ðsm1  sm0 Þ ð10Þ are discussed as follows:
wda1 ¼ ðh1  h0 Þ  T 0 ðs1  s0 Þ ð11Þ Fig. 1 presents the variation of exergy efficiency as a
function of mass flow rate of drying air at temperatures
The heat transfer rate due to phase change ðQ_ evap Þ, the between 40 and 70 °C. From this figure, increasing mass
rate of exergy transfer due to evaporation of the dryer flow rate augments the exergy efficiency. Maximum exergy
ðEx_ evap Þ, the heat transfer rate to the environment ðQ_ loss Þ, efficiency of 91.79% is obtained at a drying air of 70 °C
and the rate of exergy loss to the surrounding (Ex_ loss Þ are with a mass flow rate of 0.015 kg/s. Minimum value of
determined as follows, respectively (Syahrul et al., 2002): exergy efficiency is 68.65%, while drying air temperature
Q_ evap ¼ m_ w  hfg ð12Þ is 40 °C and mass flow rate is 0.01 kg/s. By comparison,
  Akpinar (2004) reported the exergy efficiency values
_Exevap ¼ 1  T 0 Q_ evap ð13Þ between 71 and 96.68% and 69.81and 97.12% at drying
T m2 temperatures of 55 and 60 °C for drying of red pepper slices
Q_ loss ¼ Q_ evap  m_ 1 ðhm2  hm1 Þ þ m_ da ðhda1  hda2 Þ ð14Þ in a convective type dryer, respectively. The exergy effi-
  ciency values between 30.81 and 100 and 46.97 and 100
_Exloss ¼ 1  T 0 Q_ loss ð15Þ were also obtained by Akpinar et al. (2006) at drying tem-
Tb
peratures of 60 and 70 °C for drying of pumpkin slices in a
cylone type dryer, respectively. It can be seen from Fig. 2,
3.5. Exergy efficiencies of tray drying increasing the weight of olive influences the exergy effi-

The exergy efficiency of the dryer can be defined as the

ratio of the product exergy to exergy inflow for the cham-
ber. Thus, the general form of exergy efficiency is written as
(Akpinar, 2004):
_ loss
Ex
gex ¼ 1  ð16Þ
_ in
Ex

4. Results and discussion

In this section, the effects of the drying air temperature, Fig. 1. Variation of exergy efficiencies at different mass flow rates of
the mass flow rate of drying air and olives on the system per- drying air (Mass flow rate of olives: 0.00015 kg s1).
formance are discussed. The polynomial relations for the
variations of specific heat and enthalpy of olives with tem-
perature and composition were obtained with the help of
a regression program using the numerical values of specific
heats and enthalpies at some temperatures from Mannape-
ruma and Singh (1989). The entropy of olives at the inlet
was calculated from Eq. (7), while that at the outlet was
made in a similar manner. Exergy analyses of the tray dryer
were determined for 15% relative humidity, 40, 50, 60 and
70 °C drying air temperatures and 1 m s1 air velocity. In
addition to these, a parametric study was undertaken to cal-
culate exergy efficiencies for different drying air velocities Fig. 2. Variation of exergy efficiencies at different mass flow rates of olive
and mass flow rates of olives. (Mass flow rate of air: 0.01 kg s1).
1192 N. Colak, A. Hepbasli / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1188–1193

perature of drying air increases from 40 to 70 °C. Total

uncertainties associated with the calculated values are listed
in Table 3.

5. Conclusions

This paper has presented an exergy analysis of drying

process of green olive. The experimental data obtained
from the measurements were utilized to conduct a system
performance evaluation of energy and exergy efficiencies
Fig. 3. Variation of exergy loss and efficiency at different boundary and its exergetic improvement potential. Exergy destruc-
temperatures of dryer (Drying air temperature is 70 °C and mass flow rate tions (representing the losses) in the system were also
of air is 0.01 kg s1).
quantified.
The following main conclusions may be drawn from the
0.20
main results of the present study:
Improvement potential rates (kJ s)
-1

0.15 (a) Minimum and maximum exergy efficiency values are

obtained to be 68.65% and 91.79% at 40 °C and 70 °C
with mass flow rates of 0.01 kg s1 and 0.015 kg s1,
0.10
respectively.
(b) It is proposed that the boundary temperature of the
0.05 drying chamber should be decreased in order to
40 50 60 70
o
Temperature of drying air ( C)
obtain a lower exergy loss and higher exergy
efficiency.
Fig. 4. Variation of improvement potential rates at different temperatures (c) Based on the quality analyses, the green olive dried at
of drying air (Mass flow rate of drying air is 0.01 kg s1).
a temperature of 50 °C was found to be in an accept-
able property. In terms of exergy efficiency, the dry-
Table 3 ing process realized at a temperature of 70 °C was
Total uncertainties of the calculated parameters
obtained to be the best. When the quality properties
Description Nominal value Unit Total uncertainty (%) were investigated, it was seen that the drying results
_ loss 1
Ex 0.1795 kJ s ± 1.59 at 50 and 60 °C were not very much different from
_ D
Ex 0.1041 kJ s1 ± 1.83 each one. This temperature difference of 10 °C
_ evap
Ex 0.3646 kJ s1 ± 0.09
_ PÞ
ðEx 0.0001 kJ s1 ± 0.20
resulted in an increase of 13.66% in the exergy
in
_ PÞ
ðEx 0.0036 kJ s1 ± 0.20 efficiency.
out
_ da Þ
ðEx in 1.2611 kJ s1 ± 0.60 (d) The analysis should provide a designer with a better,
_ da Þ
ðEx out 1.3386 kJ s1 ± 0.60 quantitative grasp of the inefficiencies and their rela-
gex 0.8577 ± 7.31 tive magnitudes. Furthermore, the results can focus
IP_ 0.1032 kJ s1 ± 1.99
an engineer’s attention on components where the
greatest potential is destroyed and quantify the extent
to which modification of one component affects,
ciency. Exergy used for drying the product increases with
favorably or unfavorably, the performance of other
the increase in the product mass. For this reason, exergy
components of the system.
efficiency rises. Exergy efficiency would be increased if the
amount of the product dried in the drying cabinet were
increased. However, this increase in the efficiency would
Acknowledgements
be relatively lower than the efficiency obtained from the
increase in the drying air mass flow rate. Fig. 3 exhibits
The authors thank Prof. Dr. Abdulkadir Yagcioglu and
the variation of exergy losses and exergy efficiency of the
his team from Department of Agricultural Machinery,
dryer at different boundary temperatures of the dryer at
Faculty of Agriculture, Ege University in Izmir, Turkey.
70 °C drying air temperature. Exergy loss of the drying
In addition, the valuable comments of the reviewers are
chamber at different drying air temperatures is approxi-
gratefully acknowledged.
mately constant. If the boundary temperature of the drying
chamber increases, exergy loss increases. Nevertheless, this
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