Performance analysis of greenhouse solar dryer using evacuated tubes

Abstract

Agriculture is India's most popular vocation, and the pace of agricultural product output is increasing every day. Due to a lack of post-harvest and storage facilities, a large quantity of agricultural goods goes to waste. As a result, the agricultural industry need effective agricultural product preservation techniques in order to reduce food losses. Drying/dehydration is a common preservation technique used across the world to extend the self-life of agricultural goods while also reducing spoilage. It is heat and mass transfer process which occurs at same time. Solar drying, combined heat and power drying, geothermal drying, biomass drying, and other technologies for reducing moisture content in agricultural products are all the options. Solar drying is one of these renewable technologies that has been utilized to preserve food and agricultural goods in order to maintain the food balance. The ETSC based greenhouse dryer has been proposed to maintain the food quality. The main objective of the research is to dry the ivy gourd using greenhouse solar dryer with evacuated tubes. The results shows that the maximum temperature obtained in this dryer was found to be 75 °C.The moisture content in the product was reduced from 80% to 9% in active mode whereas passive mode the moisture content was reduced to 12%. The collector and dryer efficiency was found to be 37% and 26% respectively.