Moisture removal rate of solar dryers – A review

Abstract, Journal of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2017 May

Agriculture is fighting many tough challenges to successfully meet the demands of the growing population. Not just production but effectively storing and utilizing the produce is also important. Preservation of agricultural products, from deterioration before its use, is essential for various reasons like, the place of production is far from its utility, some of the products may not be producible throughout the year, to meet the unexpected rise in demand, etc. Among various factors, moisture plays a critical role in spoilage of agricultural products. Presence of moisture enables bacteria, yeast, and molds to grow and cause spoilage. Solar dryers enable cheaper, easy and effective way to remove the moisture at the very place of production. Solar dryers effectively capture and concentrate sun’s heat to heat the product and evaporate and release the moisture until the moisture comes down to safe level. Various dryer designs were designed and studied that can effectively trap the solar heat inside them. The present work aims to review some of the designs and compare their performance based on their moisture removal rate.

KEY WORDS: Solar dryer, moisture removal, agricultural products.