The Effect of Infrared Drying on Orthosiphon Stamineus Leaves Quality

The dryer system is an important part of the drying of food and herbs, among other things. As a result, a special dryer is needed to keep the food or herbs fresh for as long as possible without killing the good nutrients. In this project, Orthosiphon stamineus herb will be used to dry using an Infrared dryer. Infrared drying involves transferring heat by radiation from a hot source to a lower-temperature substance that has to be heated or dried. The temperature of the heated element determines the peak wavelength of the radiation. The purpose of this project is to design an infrared dryer system and analyze the quality of the dried herb. The Orthosiphon Stamineus have been dried using a 200W Infrared dryer system at 60°C for 2hours. Total phenolic compounds and antioxidant capacity were determined using the Folin-Ciocalteu method and the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity assay and evaluated using a UV/VIS Spectrophotometer, respectively. A moisture analyzer was used to look at the changes in moisture content, and a colorimeter was used to look at the colour changes. The result showed that drying O.stamineus under 60°C has significantly affected the herbal leaves quality in terms of moisture content, colour properties, Antioxidant capacity, and Total phenolic content.