ENERGY SOURCES IN INNOVATIVE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES OF VEGETABLE PROCESSING

The analysis of numerous scientific works shows that the intensive development of innovative types of technology exceeds the development of the methodological foundations of power engineering management. There are no clear comparisons of the energy efficiency of electrical technologies and heat technologies, since different types of energy are used; there are no objective indicators of energy efficiency in various technologies of dehydration of raw materials. The present study proposes a methodology based on the hypothesis that when comparing energy efficiency in the processing of raw materials, objective results can be obtained through a system analysis of the entire energy conversion chain from fuel to a finished product. The research purpose is to experimentally prove the validity of this hypothesis. The author suggests using the indicator of the share of fuel energy in the finished product and the amount of moisture removed when burning 1 kg of fuel. This figure does not depend on fluctuations in energy prices, which may vary for different countries. The paper presents an heat balance analysis of drying and evaporation plants. It is shown that with the same technical tasks, non-optimized evaporation is several times more efficient than the optimized drying process. The authors present structural models of energy conversion in combined processes for the production of concentrated food products. The energy efficiency of using fuel in conventional drying, evaporation, and cryoconcentration techniques has been calculated. The obtained parameters are compared with the data for innovative models of machines developed by the author. It is shown that the evaporating installations developed by the author are not inferior in efficiency to conventional ones, and allow obtaining concentrates up to 90 brix. The developed microwave dryers and unit freeze installations significantly exceed the efficiency of their counterparts, allowing to withdraw, respectively, up to 6 and 100 kg of moisture, while conventional dryers for fuels with an oil equivalent of 40 MJ per 1 kg can remove no more than 3 kg of moisture, and cryoconcentrators – 20 kg.