14-10-2014, 10:44 AM
Abstracts: The objective of this work is to design, develop and evaluate performance of a mixed direct and indirect solar food dryer, using in both mode of passive and active for the drying of ground nuts. Drying is one of the oldest methods using solar energy where the product such as vegetables, fruits, fish, and meat to be dried exposed directly to the sun. This method has many disadvantages such as spoilt products due to rain, wind, dust, insect infestation, animal attack and fungi. Foods should be dried rapidly, but the speed of drying will cause the outside becomes hard before the moisture inside has a chance to evaporate and it will affect the quality of dried product due to over drying. The design of a functional solar dryer system would minimizethese disadvantages. This design of both modes was employed and has compared with the performance testing through parameters such as temperature, air velocity, collector efficiency and weight loss. It was shown that the use of this type of solar dryer reduced the drying time significantly and essentially provides better product quality compared with conventional drying method. The design, fabrication and effect of temperature to moisture contents against time and rate of drying are studied in this research.