Design and Development of Solar Crop Dryer Integrated with Oil Bath

Abstract

This work presents the design and development of solar crop dryer with drained SAE 20/40 from vehicles oil as heat storage material. The details design, fabrication and experimental analysis procedure of the developed dryer are explained. The crops used during the experiments were potato slices (2 kg) and ginger (2 Kg) while air velocity maintained at 10 m/s. Potato slices of upper and lower trays have taken the drying time of 5 hours and 6 hour to reach safe storage moisture content of below 15 % and whereas ginger of upper tray and lower tray have taken drying time of 9 and 10 hours to reach moisture content of below 15. The maximum value of instantaneous of the collector (Oil bath) efficiency reported was 57. 48 % and minimum value was 18.59 %.

Keywords

• solar energy
• solar dryers
• crop drying
• heat storage material