Performance analysis of cabinet type solar dryer for ginger drying with & without thermal energy storage material

Abstract

Solar energy is one of the most pay-back sources of energy. Drying provides extended shelf life to agricultural crops in general and thus proper design of dryers will assist in drying them to an acceptable level and quality. This work has been carried out with the design & Development of the solar dryer novel design of the double air pass type collector. In this work fresh Ginger is used for complete drying to prepare the Ginger powder. Nowadays ginger powder is very useful in various medicines. In this research work, 2000gm fresh ginger has been selected for drying in a cabinet solar dryer. Thermal energy storage material with good latent heat was selected to improve the dryer performance. The initial moisture content in the fresh ginger is 80 % and after drying for 2 days without thermal energy storage material moisture available finally is 9 % & weight is 288 gm. A similar experiment was carried out for ginger Drying with thermal energy storage material in a solar dryer final moisture measured is 8 % & the weight measured is 251 gm. By doing the proper literature survey Atlas wax SF 42 material is selected as energy storage material. It’s a phase change kind of energy storage material. Having a melting point of 45 °C and Latent heat of 164 Kj. The efficiency of a solar Dryer without thermal energy storage materials is calculated 45 % and with thermal energy storage materials calculated 48 %. So the 3 % improvement is there in the efficiency of solar dryer by energy storage material with 2000gm quantity of Ginger. If the quantity is more with more capacity then efficiency can be increased beyond 3 %. The outcome shows that by using the thermal energy storage material efficiency of the dryer is improved as it has a higher moisture removal rate. The designed and developed solar dryer is cost-effective and the Payback period of the solar dryer is 14 months.