Development of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for Solar Drying Systems

Abstract

Solar drying is an effective way for drying food products. Therefore, the development of efficient and cost-effective solar dryer has become a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. Solar energy is freely available during daytime; henceforth, it can’t be utilized during off-sunshine hours. Therefore, solar dryer with thermal energy storage (TES) is becoming important for drying of food and agriculture crop. The interest in TES along with PCMs has increased in the past, as the suitable PCMs, i.e., paraffins, fatty acids, salt hydrate, eutectics, and binary mixtures, generally have all relevant thermophysical properties for the thermal applications. In comparison with the other categories, few selected fatty acids, i.e., commercial-grade lauric acid (LA), myristic acid (MA), palmitic acid (PA), stearic acid (SA), and acetamide (AC), are generally used in solar drying applications. The abovementioned fatty acids have been tested through differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) thermal analysis technique and concluded as potential PCMs for TES applications. Based on the DSC analysis, it may be concluded that the developed binary mixtures were in the melting range of 40–60 °C with an adequate amount of energy. The main aim of this chapter is to provide an idea about the methodology to develop the promising PCMs for TES applications.