Design and construction of a novel round the clock solar crop dryer with water recovery :

Abstract

This project is about designing, constructing and testing a round the crop solar crop dryer with water recovery. It involves detailed design of five different subsystems requiring different areas of knowledge, and bringing them together in one integrated solar crop dryer. This particular part of the main project handles the solar (ST) and solar photovoltaic (PV) subsystems. For a dryer capable of drying crop to extract at least 20 liters of water in 24 hours, an ST is designed, constructed and fitted to subsystems by other team members. Sizing is done not only to produce the day time drying energy required but also, to match some of the external dimensions of the drying chamber subsystem, designed by other team member while also satisfying aesthetic design requirements imposed by yet another member. The PV system is designed to run the electrics of the dryer on a 24 hour per day operation basis. Day time design energy requirements are supplied by the solar thermal and the air flow systems. Night time and cloudy hours’ design energy requirements are supplied solar photovoltaic system and the refrigeration system. Key words: solar thermal collector, photovoltaic system, round the clock solar crop dryer.