J. agric. Engng Res.

(1967) 12 (2) 115-118

Further Investigations into Single-stage Drying of Parchment Coffee

D. S.
BOYC E*

It has been shown that it is feasibleto dry parchment coffeein static beds. Drying at a depth of approximately 24 in, with an air flow rate of 525 ft/min and an air temperature of 1000 F can be carried out in approximately 48 h. This is at the same overall rate as drying at a depth of 12 in, at 65 ft/min and 110 Fin 24 h. In this latter case, however, more than double the heat energy input is required per Ib of moisture evaporated. If it is practicable to completely invert a 24 in bed when drying has been about half completed, the drying rate may be approximately doubled as compared to non-inversion with no significant increase in energy for moisture evaporation. It has been found that quite severe final moisture gradients can be tolerated provided that at the end of drying the bed is well mixed. This is because adjacent high and low moisture content grains rapidly equalize their moisture contents.
0

1. Introduction
In a previous paper the general problem of drying parchment coffee and the result of an initial investigation of single-stage drying were considered. In the initial study a bed depth of about 12 in was used and in order to minimize the final moisture gradient through the bed it was mixed several times while it was drying. The current investigation was undertaken to see if drying could be carried out in static beds without mixing during drying.
1

2. Apparatus
The small batch drier, with a bed area of 925 ft 2 used in the previous investigation 1 was slightly modified. Its capacity was increased to over 800 Ib of wet material by general strengthening of the bin and plenum chamber. An 18 in axial-flow fan powered by a! hp motor was fitted instead of the 1 hp. Air flow was metered through orifice plates conforming to the B.S.!. standard. Z Separate kilowatt-hour meters were fitted to record the power consumed by the electric air heaters and the fan respectively .

3. Materials and procedures

It is desirable before drying freshly washed parchment coffee to remove the free water associated with it and then undertake some preliminary drying. Thus if it has only been superficially drained, it will have a gross moisture content of about 58 %w.b, and if all the superficial water is removed, about 50 %. By spreading the washed parchment coffee out of doors on concrete floors in the sun and leaving it for a day, the moisture content can be reduced to about 45 %. There are of course other methods, such as pumping the coffee to a bed drier, allowing the water to drain out of it and then to draw a large volume of ambient air down through it. This will remove any remaining water and initiate drying. Forty-five per cent m.c. is the desirable starting point for single-stage drying. However, one of the problems encountered in carrying out this work was to obtain a timely and adequate supply of undried parchment coffee because it is not possible to store it for more than 24 h without serious deterioration. It was therefore necessary to carry out drying runs whenever undried parchment could be made available by co-operating farmers , and this necessitated the use of much wetter material with varying initial moisture contents. In order to make the drying times
Department of Agricultural Englneerlng, Un iversit y of Puerto Rico . College Stat ion . Ma yaguez , Puerto Rico

115

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FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS INTO SINGLE-STAGE DRYING OF PARCHMENT COFFEE

comparable they were standardized in the following manner. During the earlier part of the drying runs it was found that air flow rates, bed depths and drying air temperature were such that a complete well-defined drying zone was established." It could thus be assumed that during this period moisture was being removed at a constant rate. It was thus possible to calculate a standard drying time based on an initial moisture content of 45 % w.b. The actual drying procedure was straightforward. In order to be able to determine the final moisture gradient the bin was filled layer by layer. For 12 in depths 1 in thick layers were used, for greater depths 2 in thick. Each layer was separated by a sheet of plastic mesh. At the completion of drying a sample was taken from each layer and a moisture determination made. All moisture determinations were made in duplicate using approximately 6 g samples. No standard method for determining the moisture content of parchment coffee seems to be in use. For this work a vacuum oven was used, 16 h at 100C and 10 in Hg gave relatively consistent results. Originally attempts were made to use the NJ.A.E. standard oven method" of 16 h at 130 C for cereal grains. In this case it was noted that there was severe discoloration approaching actual physical breakdown of the surface of the individual coffee beans. It was thought that as the coffee bean may contain much more oil than the cereal grain this may have led to a thermal change at a lower temperature. During drying there was 15-20 % shrinkage. This had the effect of reducing the resistance of the bed to the flow of air. During all the runs the rate of air flow was set at the beginning and increased by approximately 10 % by the end of the run. This will, of course, be the case when a drier is operated commercially. The air flow rates given are the average rates throughout a run.
TABLE I Results for 4 drying runs

Run

Mean air vel.,

Drying air temp.,

of

ftlmin
I 2 3 4

Initial depth of bed, in

12 24 22 23

Estimated mean wt, dry matter, lb

19303 375-89 3680 33482

Energy, Water Btu/lb water evaporated, - - - lb Heat Fan

133 355 412 428 3926 1807 1549 1810 334 376 368 335

--

64'0 525 525 530

110 100 95 110

Run
1 2 3 4

Observed drying time, h

2375 52'55 77-25 41-67

Corrected drying time, h

23-44 40'39 6025 23-93

Moisture content, Initial

45'51 51'80 5479 58'29

% w.b.
Gradient top/bottom
1474/8'59 2176/8'64 18'72/8'59 9'35/9'75t

Final aver.
1130 12'53 IH3 1213

Grade of final

product"
II-A I-B I-B IC

As assessed by Cooperativa de Cafeteros de Puerto Rieo t Bed inverted max.rmin. m.e. = 15'95/9'35

4. Results and discussions During this investigation 15 drying runs were made; however, it is only necessary to consider 4 representative runs which are summarized in Table I. Run 1 is typical of the results of previous work' when 12 in deep beds were dried within 24 h. The rather high energy requirement to vaporize moisture should be noted. In comparison, in Run 2 a slightly lower drying air temperature and air flow rate but approximately twice the depth of material were used. It can be seen that

D. S. BOYCE

117

a drier operating under the conditions of Run 2 has about half the energy requirement for vaporizing moisture while the overall rate of drying remained the same. There should be no practical problems in operating parchment coffee driers on 48 h rather than 24 h cycles. For Run 3 the drying air temperature was reduced to 95 F. The result was to extend the drying time by about 24 h and to slightly reduce the energy required to vaporize moisture. Run 4 was undertaken to observe the effect of inverting the bed when drying was about half completed. The inversion was carried out as follows: each layer, separated by the sheets of plastic mesh previously mentioned, was carefully removed. The layers were then replaced in the drier in the reverse order and drying recommenced. This operation took less than 30 min. Inverting the bed and using air temperature of 110 F but the same air-flow and bed depths as for the previous two runs had the effect of nearly doubling the overall drying rate while maintaining the low energy requirements associated with Run 2. It is most likely that the marked decrease in energy requirements associated with the deeper beds and slightly reduced air flow are due to the fact that a complete drying zone formed. Thus drying occurred at the maximum rate in the deeper beds during a large proportion of the time. By inverting the bed it was thus possible to maintain a complete drying zone for an even larger proportion of the time. The smaller reduction in the energy requirement to vaporize moisture between Runs 2 and 3 is probably due to the fact that the less the drying air is heated, the higher the proportion of the energy used to vaporize moisture is present in the ambient air, that is the closer conditions approach to drying with ambient air where no heat is added at all. It will be seen that the energy required to operate the fan per lb of water evaporated remains relatively constant though, as expected, if the rate of drying is high, the total drying time is reduced and there will also be a slight reduction in fan power. It should be noted that in practice the energy used to operate the fan will be less than shown because the values given include the energy loss across the orifice plate. It would appear particularly in the case of Runs 2 and 3 that the gradients from top to bottom of the bed are rather severe; however, composite samples of all layers were submitted only a few days after the completion of each run to the local representative of Cooperativa Cafeteros de Puerto Rico, the principal coffee buyer on the Island, who assessed all the samples as adequately and uniformly dried. In the grades assigned, 1 stands for the highest grade, which is subgraded in descending merit A, B, and C. In all cases the lack of quality was attributed to factors other than the drying operation. It should be noted that with Run 4 inversion had the effect of minimizing the moisture gradient. As would be expected the maximum moisture content occurred nearly midway in the bed. It has been observed by other workers, for example Williamson," that if high and low moisture content grains are mixed, a comparatively rapid exchange of moisture takes place. In order to evaluate this effect, samples of low moisture content parchment coffee were lightly sprayed with blue dye and further dried. It was assumed that, as there was no detectable moisture content difference between similar samples, the effect of the dye on the moisture relationship was negligible. These samples were mixed with wet undyed samples. At intervals subsamples of dyed and undyed coffee were taken from the mixture and moisture content determinations made. A typical result is shown in Table II. No moulding was observed in either the samples or the bags of
TABLE

II

Change of moisture contentin a mixture of dried parchment, % w.b.

Date Time, h 1530 1030
1100

I Sample A
896 1460 1485

Sample B 23-73 1697 15-84

II. Nov.
17. Nov. 21. Nov,

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FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS INTO SINGLE-STAGE DRYING OF PARCHMENT COFFEE

parchment after drying and mixing. It may be concluded that provided that the bed is reasonably well mixed at the end of drying quite steep initial gradients may be tolerated.

Acknowledgements This work is part of a Programme in Coffee Processing Investigation being carried out by the Agricultural Engineering Department, Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Puerto Rico, College Station, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. The author is grateful to D. van Rest for modifying the experimental drier and to R. Otero for assisting in carrying out the experiments.
REFERENCES
1 2
3

Boyce, D. S. Single-stage bin drying of bin dry parchment coffee. J. agric, Engng Res., 1964,9 (1) 77 Code for flow measurement. Br. Stand. Spec. 1042: 1943 Boyce, D. S. Heat and moisture transfer in ventilated grain. J. agric, Engng Res., 1966,11 (4) Matthews, J. The accuracy of measurement of known changes in moisture content of cereals by typical oven methods. J. agric. Engng Res., 1962, 7 (3) 185 Williamson, W. F. Transfer of moisture from damp to dry wheat in storage. Tech. Memo. 71, nat. Inst. agric, Engng, Silsoe, 1952