Experimental Evaluation of a Natural Indirect Solar-Biomass Dryer with Automated Single Axis Solar Tracking System for Urban Dwellers
Keywords:
Solar-biomass, automated axis, tracking system, solar dryerAbstract
Many crops are seasonal in nature around the world; for this reason, there is a sustained need in finding better ways of processing and preserving them – to avail them in times of their lack and to ensure for their market sustainability. In this work, a natural indirect solar-biomass dryer with automated single axis solar tracking system was constructed and evaluated at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria using the meteorological conditions of Zaria, Nigeria. Apart from designing a system that can be used at both fair and adverse weather conditions, to help maximize the solar energy collected on the flat plate collector (FPC) without discomforting the user who may also want to attend to other needs, an automated single axis solar tracking system was incorporated to the flat plate collector (FPC) to help track the sun. The performance of the solar dryer in terms of the moisture content, drying rate, collector efficiency and drying efficiency was evaluated when the FPC was made to track the sun automatically; 36.67%, 1.73×10-4 (kg/s), 68.68% and 23.12% were respectively recorded for the moisture content, drying rate, collector and drying efficiencies for this test. By automatically tracking the sun with the FPC, the solar dryer’s performance was also improved upon over the fixed FPC system. The experimental test on the solar-biomass system to evaluate the extent the individual dryer systems can remove moisture from the tomato product, the biomass drying system was found to be of highest performance, followed by the solar-biomass and lastly the solar system. For the hours of drying, a moisture 0.60 kg, 0.73 kg and 0.93 kg was respectively extracted by the solar, solar-biomass and biomass drying systems from the product.
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