Realization and Experimental Study of a Forced Convection Solar Dryer

Abstract

Post-harvest losses represent a significant cause of food insecurity worldwide. These losses not only affect the availability of food, but they also impact the economic stability of farmers and communities dependent on these crops. Food drying presents itself as a viable solution to reduce these post-harvest losses and ensure greater availability of food for human consumption. It is in this context that our work on the creation of an indirect solar dryer with forced convection, integrating an automatic temperature control system, takes place. This study consisted of creating a prototype and subsequently carrying out drying experiments on onions in order to evaluate the performance of the device. Our experiments took place from October 25 to October 29, 2023 at Joseph KI-ZERBO University. After 8 hours of drying, only 12% of the initial mass of the onions remained. The solar thermal collector presented an efficiency of 62%. And a drying efficiency, estimated at 17% with an average sunshine of 600W/m2.