Abstract

The investment into sausage drying technology based on traditional technics using large-scale air handling unit, air ducts, boiler and traditional refrigerator is over the budget of the national agriculturist. The technological development has enabled the meat drying technology also for low budget enterprises nowadays. The object of this research was to investigate the sausage drying process in a small-scale test chamber with a novel direct current inverter condensing unit including the significant elements such as scroll compressor, electronic expansion valve and proportional-integral-derivative controller system. To achieve this object, the test facility was installed in the introduction room of Kassai-Klima Limited-Liability Company in which the drying process of 200 kg fresh sausages was investigated by experiments. During the tests, the electricity consumption of the condensing units was also measured. The total electrical consumption of the system was 5,160 kWh based on the electricity meter during the five days of experiment. This way the energy efficiency and emissions could be monitored and compared with traditional sausage drying technologies.