Performance Evaluation of an Inflatable Solar Dryer for Maize and the Effect on Product Quality Compared with Direct Sun Drying

Influences of a novel cylindrical solar dryer on farmer's income and its impact on environment

Poor grain drying facilities, along with the burden of drying cost, bound the farmers to market their produce soon after harvest. Thus, this research paper intends to study the influences of a novel cylindrical solar-assisted dryer on farmers' income and its impact on the environment. The paper also presents the design and fabrication of a drying system for maize cobs using non-conventional solar energy. The performance of the solar-assisted drying system was also investigated for drying of yellow dent maize cobs. As a very energy-intensive post-harvest process, drying consumes a lot of electricity, which is usually provided by conventional energy. Here, solar dryers are the perfect solution in terms of efficiency, uniform drying of agricultural food products, less drying time, increased marketability of agricultural products, and reducing the load on farmer's pocket for drying. With a high internal rate of return of 66 percent, the designed dryer proved to be technically and economically viable. Compared to open sun drying, the solar drying system produced better quality and drying time results. Compared to other models, the Midilli model fits the experimental maize drying data better, with a coefficient of determination of R² = 0.89729. Energy analysis inferred savings of 1352.97 kWh electrical energy and 128.18 liters of diesel fuel plus a reduction of 1.22 t CO₂ per annum can be achieved by using this dryer.

High-Precision Laboratory Dryer for Characterization of the Drying Behavior of Agricultural and Food Products

To reduce the energy consumption during the drying of agricultural and food products, the optimization of the drying process with regard to the drying behavior and the quality of the end products is necessary. Therefore, much effort is spent designing and developing dryers to study the drying behavior of a wide range of products. This often results in a trade-off between measurement accuracy and the sufficient production of dried material required for the product quality analysis. Therefore, a laboratory dryer was developed consisting of three high-precision drying columns, each able to process 600 g of sample mass, and a flatbed dryer that can be loaded with 20 kg of fresh product. Drying curves could be recorded simultaneously by electronic balances in the three precision dryers and the flatbed dryer. The high-precision laboratory dryer HPD TF3+ proved to be suitable for establishing drying curves for a defined temperature, rel. humidity and velocity of the drying air.