Decision Making in Designing and Choice of Dryer for Tropical Agricultural Crop

The reduction of the post-harvest loses that reaches 50% in the developing countries constitutes a major stake for their development. Then, it is right to make more efficient the processes of stabilization and conservation of products. The drying constitutes of a more used process but the mistakes committed in the choice of dryer in a given context entail important losses of products. As an approach of solution to this problem, we conceived and realized a decision making tool. An industrial engineering procedure has been led to analyze drying activities. The tool is informed by a data base containing the features of tropical products, the climatic environment and the construction supplies for dryers. The technical solutions describing the types of dryers have been counted from a technological watch over and analyzed using industrial engineering tools. The choice of indicators permits to value and to compare the different technical solutions. The implementation of the decision making tool in Visual Basic with Microsoft Excel software permits, from the input data, to size the technical solutions, and calculate the value of the indicators for the each technical solutions and to compare them one with another. An ex post validation of the tool has been made from the functional specifications of a SMAI of drying of pineapple in Lome, Togo. The better choice recommended by these specifications is the use of ATESTA dryers. The choice corresponds to the dryer used by the SMAI satisfaction. The rough idea of the development expenses and profitability are near of the reality. Although this validation is partial, the tool seems to have from now on, a worthwhile applicative interest.