An experimental case study on development the design and the performance of indirect solar dryer type for drying bananas

Abstract

Due to the shortages of fossil fuels and higher prices, as well as to reduce the causes of climate change and the fuel consumption utilized in the drying procedure, more emphasis is placed on resources of solar energy, due to it is easily accessible. For these aims, the indirect solar dryer thermal performance for drying of the banana samples was experimentally investigated. Two indirect solar dryers; chimney-type and fan-type, consisting of the collector and dryer sections, were designed and fabricated. The lowest value of the banana piece moisture content was obtained in the case of the chimney-type as 10.59 %, which shows 81 % improvement in the drying procedure in comparison with the open sun solar dryer. In addition, the average collector thermal efficiencies obtained for the chimney and fan were 34.14 % and 29.54 %, respectively; thus, using the chimney with a solar collector offers the best thermal efficiency. Moreover, the average dryer thermal efficiencies obtained for the chimney and fan were 14.45 % and 12.76 %, respectively. Therefore, the experimental results illustrate that the chimney-type solar dryer performs better than the fan-type and open sun solar dryers.