Abstract :
Ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) is an agricultural product, which is used as drinks and snacks, especially as traditional medicine. One of the important step in the processing of ginger is drying. The drying process intended to reduce the water content of 85-90% to 8-10%, so the ginger safe from the influence of fungi and insecticides. In the drying process, the main constituent in the ginger phenolic ketone commonly called gingerol were unstable at higher temperatures, because of the drying technology is an important factor in keeping the active ingredient of ginger (gingerol). Dryer combination of solar energy and molecular sieve used in this study can operate 24 hours. The purpose of this study was to study the effect of operating conditions (in this case the air velocity) of the drying characteristics and the quality of dried ginger using a combination of solar dryers and molecular filter. Drying machine consists of three parts, namely: desiccator, solar collectors, and drying chamber. To record data on the change in mass, the materials weighed every hour using an electric scale. All data of temperature and RH in the drying chamber and mass changes are stored in the form of Microsoft Excel. The results indicate that the effect of air velocity on drying rate and moisture content, which reaches an equilibrium moisture content at each variation of air velocity 0.8 m/s; 1.1 m/s; and 1.3 m/s is 20 hours at 12.66%, 11.67% at 8 hours, and 10 hours at 10.76%. The characteristics show that the within the drying process, there are 2 drying period, which is a increased drying rate period and decreased drying rate period, while the constant drying rate period is not visible. The results of the organoleptic analysis showed no significant changes that occurred on dried ginger, ash content obtained at a variable rate of 0.8 m/s; 1.1 m/s; and 1.3 m/s, respectively 5.23%, 4.39%, and 5.02%, while for each oil content was 1.08%, 1.20%, and 1.20%.