Design, Manufacturing and Performance Test of a PV Operated Forced Convective Solar Dryer

High quality dehydrated agricultural product requires a great attention during growing and post harvest process. Conventional dryer commonly uses fossil fuel. This source of energy has noxious effect and various toxics on crops and causes biological pollution. In Kerman province -southeast of Iran- due to long period of sunshine during harvesting season, solar drying is known to be an excellent alternative for the fossil fuels. A mixed-mode solar dryer specimen is designed and manufactured to investigate drying process in several conditions. This designed dryer can be simply used for drying various agricultural products like fruits and vegetables and pistachio. The proposed solar dryer includes collector, chamber and a PV module to drive suction fans. The chamber has a glassy door. Dryer has been tested at no-load condition. Temperature at various points, voltage and current of each fan, solar radiation and flow rate of fans were recorded. According to these parameters that were plotted against local time the efficiency of solar collector was calculated.

کلیدواژه ها:

Solar ، Dryer ، Photovoltaic ، Experiment