Experimental studies on drying of orange peel in solar tunnel dryer using sensible heat storage material

A solar tunnel dryer along with solar air heater has been built with sensible heat storage material at VIT University, Vellore, mainly for drying agricultural and horticulture product on small scale. The pebbles coated with black color are used as sensible heat storage material, in the dryer. A mass of 36 Kgs are used inside the dryer. The current paper determines the performance of the dryer to dry orange peels. It took 14 hrs to dry in natural convection where as it took 8 hrs to dry in natural convection along with sensible heat storage material. Solar tunnel dryer integrated with solar air heater and sensible heat storage material represents a more drying efficiency than mechanical dryers no additional cost is used to run and maintaining of dryer and natural convection with sensible heat storage is a good method improving performance of the dryer.