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In Mexico, 88 million tons of food are wasted every year according to data from the study by the Technical Group of the National Crusade against Hunger, released by the Senate of the Republic in May 2016. Much of the food that is wasted is fresh agricultural products that do not reach the consumer's sight. Currently there is solar concentration technology that can dehydrate many of these foods and find new consumers for them. In Mexico City, in October 2016, the first Solar Dehydration Farm began operating in the town of Santa Cruz Acalpixca, Xochimilco delegation, with the capacity to process up to five tons of fresh food per week. Depending on the product you want to dehydrate, the final weight, after removing the water with controlled solar energy, can be between one and two tons. The base technology of the project is a solar dehydrator. The first model was built 12 years ago and is based on heat transfer. Currently the farm, which is owned by the Labizet cooperative, has more than 100 dehydration modules. The product they process the most is the nopal, for example, a variety that is wasted a lot, but is rich in calcium and can be transformed into flour.
We as a cooperative company, have been in the dehydration business for nine years. The first plant we started with was in Tláhuac and there we began to have contact with producers who brought us their products for processing. Technologically, the process has had continuous improvements, adapting to the products. This equipment was designed to dehydrate one of the products that has the Europe Cell Phone Number List most water, which is the nopal, but we have offered the service for different products that have been brought to us," he explains in the interview published in the most recent issue of Forum magazine, of the Scientific and Technological Consultative Forum, engineer Roberto Alcaraz, member of the cooperative and spokesperson for Labizet. He reports that since the new Dehydrating Farm came into operation they have been linked with more agricultural producers from Milpa Alta, Xochimilco and Tláhuac. A greater number of farmers has led them to work with a diversity of foods. Solar infrastructure The solar dehydrators used by the cooperative consist of two parts, which have been modified and improved over 12 years.
The first part is a flat solar collector, which receives radiation from the Sun and generates hot air through something similar to the greenhouse effect because the Sun's rays enter and bounce inside, but no longer lets them exit through the same surface. Instead, it sends the heat to the second part of the dehydrator, which is a container with 24 shelves, on each of which there is a tray, and the agricultural product to be dehydrated is placed there. “Producers have been bringing us large quantities of cactus that were not being used and were thrown away. In particular, they are rescuing a type of cactus that some call 'rackets' and you see many lying in the fields. This type of cactus still has many properties and is very rich in calcium and other components. Thanks to the dehydration process, the farmers are delighted because they are now obtaining high-quality cactus flour that they can market and the racket cactus no longer end up as garbage, but rather generate value says Alcaraz.
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发表于 2024-3-7 14:34:33