Performance Evaluation of a Passive Solar Crop Drying
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This paper presents the performance evaluation of a passive solar dryer. The Dryer was designed and constructed at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Caritas University, Amorji-Nike, and Enugu, Nigeria. The Dryer was constructed using locally sourced materials from Ogbete main market, Enugu. Experimentation was carried out using samples of 20mm and 40mm sliced cassava chips weighing 46g and 80g respectively in the month of November, 2020.Temperature readings of the ambient air, the drying chamber and the collector chamber were recorded and tabulated for the hours of 10.00am to 5.00pm for the first day and 9.00am to 4.00pm for the second day. The moisture content and drying rates were evaluated for both samples using both dry and wet basis. Plots were made on the variation of temperature with time as well as moisture content with time for both dry and wet basis for the two days. Results show that the mass of the water removed were 112g and 105g for the first and second day respectively. Results also show the collector efficiency as 37.9% while the dryer efficiency was evaluated to be 37.6%. The moisture content of the 20mm samples of cassava slices were evaluated to be 53.03% and 38.8% for the first and second day respectively, while of the 40mm sample were evaluated as 112.9% and 64.6% respectively for the first and second day. The moisture loss or drying rate for the respective samples of 20mm and 40mm were evaluated to be 27.0g/hr and 34.0g/hr, showing percentage drying rates of 62.1% and 68% for the first and second day respectively. The equipment and the test therefrom have shown tremendous improvement on crop drying over the conventional open air drying method used in the region/location under study. It also provided a veritable tool for training students on heat and mass transfer analysis.
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