Studies on solar chimney type agricultural crop dryer

Prabha Humberi; Shankar Badiger; Abhilasha Paschapur

Abstract

A natural convection solar chimney type dryer is studied experimentally to investigate the drying temperature distribution and drying rate of the crop. The dryer has been built with black painted solar collector and the chimney attached to create the draft. The performance of the solar chimney type dryer was carried out for the varying the different air inlet gaps. The temperature study showed that the maximum temperature is seen at the base of the chimney and near the base. The solar chimney type dryer can be utilized effectively to dry the crop by keeping the crop near the base of the chimney where there is a maximum temperature is seen. The drying time of the crop were reduced by 50% for the air entrance gap of 5 mm as compared to the open sun drying.

Abstract

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