Development and Performance Evaluation of an Indirect Heat Copra Dryer with Phase Changer

In the Philippines, farming communities produce copra using traditional open sun drying method that could be severely affected by heavy rainfall, temperature change, and intermittent sunshine, which could cause high microbial infection to the product. On the other hand, kiln drying may avoid these circumstances. However, smoke deposits in the finished product still cause farmers to have low-quality grade copra. Keeping this in view, an indirect heat copra dryer with phase changer (IHCDPC) was designed, fabricated, and evaluated in the hopes of providing farmers an alternative approach in drying copra, which may yield to producing a high-quality grade product. The developed IHCDPC was able to reduce the moisture content in fresh coconut meat from 57.4% w.b. to about 7.2% w.b. for a drying time of twenty-five hours. The IHCDPC was found out to have a thermal efficiency of 30.87%. The copra produced were graded as 84% MGC1, 13% MGC2, and 3% MGC3.