Application of Solar Energy in Drying Pepper

Drying is an important and key preservation technique in processing agricultural product. In today’s globalization era where food and agriculture product is given great emphasis, the producers and consumers is expecting a better and advanced technology drying technique that utilizes the free rene...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Syarizatul Nadia binti. Rosdi, Syarizatul
Format: Final Year Project
Language:English
Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2008
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Online Access:http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/3596/1/j-Application_of_Solar_Energy_in_Drying_Pepper.PDF
http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/3596/
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Summary:Drying is an important and key preservation technique in processing agricultural product. In today’s globalization era where food and agriculture product is given great emphasis, the producers and consumers is expecting a better and advanced technology drying technique that utilizes the free renewable and sustainable environmental friendly energy like solar. With this in view, a research based study of solar application in drying the agricultural product with specification to the pepper industry, was carried out. The aim of the study is to design a feasible solar dryer for the small producer. The project scopes include the design development of an active mixed mode solar dryer equipped with the thermal storage for a continuous operation. Thus, in order to reach the project’s scopes and objective, all the design processes such as identification of dryer’s requirements, conceptual design, stating the design constraint, design calculation, specification of dryer and the economic evaluation had been accomplished. Result shows that the mixed mode designed dryer which equipped with the 7.46m² solar air collector, 0.13m vertical rock bed thermal storage, 12V fan PV powered and 0.475m vertical drying chamber is able to dry 100 kg of fresh pepper berries in two days continuous operation. With four years of payback period, the dryer can be very economical and valuable investment for the producers.