How To Dry Mealworms

Mealworms are the larval stage of a black beetle, Tenebrio molitor, a species of darkling beetle.  The larvae can measure from 1.5 cm while young and usually grow to around 2.5 cm at their largest state. Mealworms are typically used as a pet food for captive reptiles, fish, and birds. They are also provided to wild birds in bird feeders, particularly during the nesting season. Mealworms are useful for their high protein content. They are also used as fishing bait.

Agitator Dryer is a simple fluid-bed type dryer with ribbon agitator, which is specially designed for drying black soldier fly larvae (or maggots, larva insects) with affordable price. The dryer consists of a conical drying chamber and a ribbon type agitator. The conical part of drying chamber is made by perforated plate. Wet material is fed by gravity into the drying chamber via the feed valve. With the help of rotary ribbon agitator, wet material regularly moves up against the inner conical wall and then falls down in the center, hot air flows through the wet material for uniform and fast drying. The dried product is unloaded from the bottom discharge valve. 

For drying mealworms or larvae, our Agitator Dryer has the following overwhelming advantages: 

1. Short drying time: The dryer works in batch operation so the drying time can be controlled according to different working conditions. When the inlet hot air temperature is 150 ℃, it just takes about 60-90 minutes to dry one batch from about 70% to 5% moisture content for fresh mealworms or larvae. When increase the hot air temperature to 200 ℃, the mealworms or larave can be roasted to get golden and crunchy product. 

2. Uniform Drying: The regular movement of wet material inside the drying chamber and specially designed hot air distribution chamber can make sure hot air evely flow through the wet material. 

3. Flexible heat source:  Our agitator dryer can work with different heat sources, such as electricity, steam, thermal oil or hot air generator by burning coal, biomass fuels, oil, gas etc.  

4. Affordable price: Our agitator dryer is quite simple, compact, reliable, easy to operate and clean. And the price is much lower compared to microwave dryer. belt dryer or vacuum disc dryer. 

5. Large drying capacity with compact machine. The biggest drying capacity can be 1 ton/h with a 1500L drying chamber. Different capacity 30 -1000 kg/h is available. 

Blanched larvae

Dried larve with 200 ℃ hot air

Drying chamber

Ribbon agitator

Hot air distribution chamber

50 kg/batch dryer for testing