THERMAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS OF DEVELOPED SOLAR DRYER ENHANCED BY PV MODULE AND HEAT STORAGE UNIT FOR DRYING CANTALOUPE

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assoc. Prof., Agric. Eng. Dept., Fac. of Agric., Cairo Univ., Egypt.

2 Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Agric. Systems Eng., College of Agric. & Food Sciences, King Faisal Univ., Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

A developed design of solar dryer with water storage heat unit was conducted to can operate the drying process continually at day and night using the stored heat. It is used to avoid the problems of sun drying as dust, pests, poor quality for dried products and long time for process. This design could provide also further improvement for the performance of the pervious same type of solar dryers. It has the following advantages such as: movable to can be directed according to sun’s angle, besides it could connect to photovoltaic modules and batteries to can store energy and operate dc fan and dc water pump in the drying system.It is found suitable for drying agricultural products as Cantaloupe. The average of daily PV efficiency during daytime was 9.1%, collector efficiency 54.38% and dryer efficiency was 23.32%. The energy payback time was 1.21 years and CO2 mitigation over the lifetime was 36.48 tons. The time of the dried cantaloupe from this solar dryer is shorter than the dried products in the open sun. This system is useful for farmers in arid areas, and non-electrical zones.

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