Design and Development of Solar Crop Dryer Integrated with Oil Bath

Solar drying is one of the important applications of solar energy used for crop drying applications. In this study, an oil bath has been integrated with solar dryer and experimental work has been conducted and analysis is made for the performance. The design and fabrication details of the developed dryer system are explained. The main objective of this study is to improve the performance of solar dryer by using an oil bath for the collection and storage of sun's energy. The use of oil bath helps to avoid sudden fluctuations in the air temperature inside the dryer. The relative humidity of incoming atmospheric air decreases when passes through the oil bath, and this enables to remove more amount moisture from the product to be dry. The crops used during the experiments were potato slices (2 kg) and ginger (2 Kg) and the air velocity maintained was 10 m/s. Potato slices of upper and lower tray have taken the drying time of 5 hours and 6 hour to reach safe storage moisture content of below 15 % whereas, ginger of upper tray and lower tray have taken drying time of 9 hours and 10 hours to reach moisture content of below 15. The maximum value of instantaneous of the collector (Oil bath) efficiency reported was 57. 48 % and minimum value was 18.59 %.