FIRST AND SECOND LAW EFFICIENCIES OF A SOLAR BIOMASS HYBRID DRYER

The paper is concerned with the first and second law analysis of the drying process of the cashew in a solar biomass hybrid dryer operating in two modes. The first law of thermodynamics was carried out to determine the thermal energy gain of the dryer and energy utilization. Second law analysis was applied to investigate the exergy losses during the hybrid drying process. Experiments were performed in natural and forced hybrid mode to evaluate the energy and exergy efficiency at a specific mass flow rate of air. It is observed that the exergy efficiency of the hybrid dryer in natural convection is slightly higher than the forced convection mode.