Design, Construction and Performance Evaluation of Ginger Mixed Mode Solar Dryer Integrated with Latent Heat Storage

Abstract

This study is concerned with the design, simulation, construction and performance evaluation of a ginger solar dryer integrated with latent heat storage. It was done to address the problem of complete non-availability of conserved energy to precede the drying process for some times immediately after the sunshine hours have elapsed; thereby reducing the wide gap between the solar energy demand and supply.  The ginger solar dryer was tested to dry 6 kg of sliced ginger rhizomes. The dimensions of the dryer were calculated by design to be as follows: 1.5638 m, 1.6302 m² and 1.155 m for collector length, collector area and chimney height respectively. An experiment was conducted to blend Aluminium powder with shea butter at elevated mass fraction of (1 – 5) %wt of Aluminium powder. The third level composition (3%/97%) was considered the most appropriate due to its moderate thermal conductivity of 0.053762 W/mK and highest latent heat of fusion - 164.53 KJ/kg. The ginger solar dryer was tested with ginger slices of (3 – 5) mm average thickness from 9:00 am to 11:00 pm of 11^th June, 2019. The average drying rate, collector efficiency and drying efficiency for the period were kg/s, 77% and 30% respectively