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Design, construction and
performance evaluation of solar maize dryer
Ahmed Abed Gatea
Department
of Agricultural mechanization, College of Agriculture,
University of Baghdad, Iraq.
E-mail:
ahmedabd192000@yahoo.com.
Accepted 29 October, 2009 |
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This paper
presents the design, construction and performance evaluation
of solar drying for maize, the solar drying system consists
of V-groove collector of 2.04 m² area, drying chamber and
blower. It was designed in such a way that solar radiation
is not incident directly on the maize. K-type thermocouples
were used for temperature measurement, while solar radiation
was measured by solar meter m od.776. The thermal energy and
heat losses from solar collector were calculated for each
three tilt angles (30º, 45º and 60º). The results obtained
during the test period denoted that the maximum gained
energy occurred at 11 o'clock hour and then gradually
declined since the maximum solar radiation occurred at this
time. The performance of the solar drying system was highly
dependent on the solar radiation, tilt angle and ambient
temperature. The total loss factor of the collector
increases with the increase in the intensity of solar
radiation intensity. The theoretical thermal energy, the
experimental actual heats gain increase by increasing
radiation intensity.
Key words: Solar energy, solar air collector, v-corrugated
collector, solar drying system performance study. |
