Solar Crop Drying-A Viable Tool for Agricultural Sustainability and Food Security
Journal Title: International Journal of Modern Engineering Research (IJMER) - Year 2014, Vol 4, Issue 6
Abstract
One of the most important potential applications of solar energy is the solar drying of agricultural products. Losses of fruits and vegetables during their drying in developing countries are estimated to be 30–40% of production. The postharvest losses of agricultural products in the rural areas of the developing countries can be reduced drastically by using well-designed solar drying systems. Solar drying is becoming a popular option to replace mechanical thermal dryers owing to the high cost of fossil fuels which is growing in demand but dwindling in supply. This paper presents the viability of solar dryer for agricultural sustainability and food security. Detailed description, fundamentals and preceding research work performed on solar dryers and solar air heaters, as the vital element for the indirect and mixed modes of solar dryers, were presented in the present review paper. For sustainability and climate change, it is important to use renewable sources of energy as much as possible. Solar energy applications were divided mainly into two categories: the first is the direct conversion to electricity using solar cells (electrical applications). The second is the thermal applications. The latter include solar heating, solar cooling, solar drying, solar cooking, solar ponds, solar distillation, solar furnaces, solar thermal power generation, solar water heating, solar air heating. Among the different types of solar dryers, the indirect mode forced convection solar dryer has been demonstrate to be superior in the speed and quality of drying. Incorporating of sensible and/or latent heat storage media within the solar drying systems accelerate the drying process during the night time and low intensity solar radiation periods and exclude the need for using auxiliary heat sources during low solar radiation seasons. The latent storage media is preferable compared to the sensible store media to achieve nearly constant drying air temperature during the drying process. Since the solar air heater is the most important component of the indirect solar drying system, improvement of the solar air heater would led to better performance of the drying system.
Authors and Affiliations
J. T Liberty1 , W. I Okonkwo2 , S. A Ngabea3
Keywords
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