2017 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)
Improvement of Conventional Solar Drying System
Nguyen Vu Lan
Abstract - This research proposes a combined-drying
system as a design solution to improve the performance of
conventional solar drying systems in terms of the uniformity of
taste and humidity remain in dried crops thanking to
controlled and stabilized drying parameters. The design is an
active solar drying type in which the even distribution of hot air
flow over the crops is emphasized and made possible by a
special chamber geometrical structure; and drying parameters
including chamber indoor temperature; humidity and air
velocity are controlled within specific value ranges by a
relevant automatic control system. Three kinds of crops,
including jackfruit, banana and bitter-melon have been tested.
Results have shown that the design actually maintained well the
set values of drying temperature and air flow rate while the
chamber's structure did help distribute the heat evenly on the
crops. The taste of the dried crops was practically exam ined by
experts and confirmed to be excellent, and humidity remain in
the crops was quite uniform with only 1.5% difference
maximum. Besides, although daily weather condition does
affect on the contribution of the absorbed solar energy, in the
testing condition, it contributed around 59% of the total energy
consumption.
Keywords - Solar drying system; Combined drying system;
Parameter control; High quality dryer.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, solar drying systems are widely used in many
countries all over the world thanks to their energy and cost
saving characteristics [1]. By utilizing the free and available
renewable energy, they are extremely suitable for agricultural
crop processing which should be as natural as possible with
low cost and stable performance. Fig.l shows the overall
classification for solar drying systems [1]. In comparison
with open-air drying or direct solar drying methods, the
indirect solar dryers show more advantages, such as drying
capacity, efficiency, avoiding crop discoloration due to direct
exposure to the solar radiation, better humidity release, etc.
Figure 1. Solar dryring system classification
* Nguyen Vu Lan is with Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
and Education, Vietnam. Email: lannv@hcmute.edu .vn
978-1-5386-3422-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
In general, conventional solar drying systems show several
weaknesses. Their main components include solar collector,
ducting pipe, drying chamber (for passive systems) and
additional electrical fan, heater (for active systems) [2-11]. The
solar collector could be, for the case of cabinet dryer, merged
with the chamber as the top roof for space saving [3]. In all
cases, the chamber usually consists inside it many trays and the
hot air flow enters from the bottom (at the center) or lateral
sides to flow up to the chimney placed at the roof. This makes
it impossible for the hot air flow ducted into the chamber to
distribute evenly inside the chamber, especially when the dryer
is fully loaded with crops. Thus the dried products usually
contain different humidity remain levels. In order to make sure
that the maximum remaining humidity does not exceed the
required value for storage, one may prolong the drying process.
Unfortunately, this method may make some crop pieces in the
same batch too dry or lose their natural taste due to too long
exposure to the hot air flow. It is necessary to ameliorate this
weakness by redesigning a new chamber geometrical structure
to upgrade the drying system to a higher quality for high
valuable drying products. Besides, the variation of solar
incident, the ambient humidity and temperature strongly affect
on the drying condition and thus make it unstable. This is the
reason for the existence of combined solar-electricity drying
systems (active mode) in which additional electrical thermal
resistor and electrical fan system are used to provide the
supplemental heat to stabilize the hot air flow temperature [12-
19]. For many crops, especially those with pharmaceutical or
nutritious values, drying condition is very important for their
characteristic preservation and best taste. This paper focuses on
developing a new design for an active solar drying system in
order to be used for drying products with restricted drying
conditions, e.g. drying temperature, uniform humidity remain
and good taste. Such purpose will be realized simultaneously
by the modification of geometric structure of the drying
chamber; utilization of supportive electrical thermal resistor
and fan; application of an automatic control system to control
drying parameters including drying temperature and hot air
flow rate. Although, energy saving efficiency is not the highest
priority of the research due to the parameter control purpose,
solar irradiation is still considered the main input energy for the
system.
II. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
A. Experimental Setup
The designed drying system is to dry products in slice or
block shapes. Ambient air is actively sucked into the system by
electrical fans and heated when going through the single-
glazing flat-plate solar collector before entering the drying
chamber. In case due to unexpected drop of solar irradiation
the air flow temperature cannot reach to the desired
temperature, which is artificially selected according to the best
drying temperature of the to-be-dried product as stated in [1],
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 2017 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

an electrical heater will be activated to compensate the Meanwhile the output heat includes heat loss, crop warm-
temperature tolerance. The heater is a thermal resistor up heat and drying active heat which are calculated as in
maintained ON in the whole drying process except only when Eq.(3) - (5) [20].
the solar irradiation is strong enough to heat the air flow to the
set value. The best drying temperature is strictly followed in
order to preserve the best taste and nutritious or pharmaceutical
values of the crops. In addition, the electricity consumption for
this purpose is affected by the set air flow rate which varies
from 0 to lOm/s by the fan controller. The controller works on Additional
Sensors
heat resistor
the basis of compensating principle. Fig.2 and Fig.3 show the
block diagram and devices of the control system of the
experiment design. The outer surface of both the air duct and Ventilation fans
drying chamber are well covered by insulation material.
In order to significantly improve the hot air flow uniform Figure 2. Block diagram of dryer control system
distribution inside the chamber space, the chamber has been
modified in such a way that it includes several sub-chambers
arranged on top of each other, each of which has separated
hot air inlet and outlets. All the inlets have the same air flow
rate and temperature since they take the air from the same
source (collector panel and electric heater) with exactly the
same fans' power. Four resemble fans have been installed
symmetrically at the bottom of each chamber to suck and

. -.
blow hot are up. Fig.4 shows how the chambers have been
modified. In this experimental design, the 03 sub-chambers
have inner dimensions of 600mm x 600 mm storing a single
mesh tray to contain crops with the total tray area of l.08m2 .
A simulation model constructed in COMSOL -------- ....
Multiphysics software has been developed for further testing
of thermal fluid dynamic of the hot air flow inside the rr!nnnn ~ , •
,~ • • - lilt / ..

chambers. Results have shown that with single tray structure,

the hot air is much better evenly distributed inside each
chamber (Fig. 5). This explains why the humidity remains in Figure 3. Experimental devices
crops are very similar with tolerance less than l.5%.
A user interface has also been developed to facilitate the user
in setting initial values for drying condition and data collection.
B. Mathematical Model
Crop drying process happens inside the chamber mainly
in the heat convection and conduction principles. The total
input heat comes partly from the incident solar radiation at
the collector and partly from the electric heater. Heat
produced by these two mechanisms could be calculated by
Eq. (I) and (2) below:
Figure 4. Chamber design
360n) (I)
Qsolar = Eo ( 1+ 0.033 cos 365 x A col ArfOWV@locrtyfi@ld

Qelec= RI2t (2)

wherein,
Qsol is the heat gained from incident solar radiation (W); 02

Acol is the solar collector area (m 2);

n is the date to do measurement;
Qelec is the heat contributed from the electric heater (W);
R is the heater resistance (n);
I is the consumed current (A) and t is the working period (s). Figure 5. Comsol Multiphysics simulation results for hot air flow distribution

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 2017 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

LK.A.L1T
Qloss = = - - -
w L
wherein,
K is the equivalent thermal conductivity of the insulated
surfaces [W/(m .K)];
A is the total equivalent insulated surface area (m2);
L1 T is the average temperature difference at the 2 sides of the
insulated surfaces;
Tdrying is drying air temperature COC);
Tini is initial air temperature (0C);
10 and b are enthalpy values of crops before and after the
drying process (J);
do and d2 are relative humidity of inside chamber air before
and after the drying process (dimensionless);
m o is total initial weight of to-be-dried crops (kg);
w is the humidity of the crops (dimensionless).
Thus, the total required heat flow for a drying batch Qdrying (J)
will be calculated as in Eq. (6):
And the inlet air flow rate, Lo (m3/s) is identified by Eq.(9):
(3)
= mow o -m 2 w 2 (9)
° d 2 -0.017
(4)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Three kinds of products have been tested with the dryer
(5) system. Table 1 shows the drying condition, period and
results. Although the air flow rate could vary in a wide range,
a specific value at 2m/s has been selected and set for all the
three experiments for comparison purpose. Next, for each
kind of crops, a relevant drying temperature is set (e.g. 80°C
for Jack-fruit, 70°C for Bitter-melon and 75°C for Banana,
respectively). Accordingly, the automatic control system will
continuously control the fans and electric heater to maintain
the set parameters within the whole drying process.
For a typical day, the obtained solar radiation and related
temperature variation at different positions inside the drying
system are solar are shown in Fig.6 and Fig.7. The measured
data reveal with a quite clear sunny day, the crops with
desired drying temperature at about 70°C can be dried mainly
with the free and available solar radiation (which contributes
up to 68% of the total energy consumption). This is because
of the amount of electricity consumed for the fans and
controller. This contribution rate is reduced even more when
the needed drying temperature is higher than 70°C or it is a
cloudy day since more electricity will be used to push the
temperature to that higher value. The taste of the dried
products has been examined by experts in the nutrition and
has received very positive feedback.
TABLE I. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Solar
(6) Original
Initial Final
Ai r Drying
Durat- Energy
slice shape flow temper-
Crops moisture moisture ion contrih-
(thickness rate ature
(%) (%) (hours) ution
x radius) (m/s) ("C)
rate (%)

The total consumed energy to produce Qdrying that is the Jack- 3mm x
83 10 2 80±0.6 6 .S 59
fruit Scm
combination of both absorbed solar radiation and electricity,
Qconsumed (1) is: Bitter- 3mm x
8S 10 2 70±0.7 7.0 65
melon Scm
Qconsllmed = a(Qsolar + Q elec ) (7)
3mm x
Banana 80 10 2 75±0.6 7.0 63
Scm
wherein, ex is the heat convection coefficient (W/m 2K) and
calculated by Eq. (8): 1,000
900
0.33

T ~d
800
(8)
I
( )
a=0.255 700
600
.~ 500
'5
in which, e 400
~
300
<5 200
A, is thermal conductivity (W ImK); Ul
100

I is characteristic dimension (m); 0

co is air flow velocity; Time (hour)

d is duct inner diameter (m) and Figure 6.Solar radiation
y is dynamic viscosity (m2/s).

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 2017 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

80.00 characteristics. Thus, such system is very suitable for high

70.00 quality drying process for high value products. Also this
~ combined solution shows the more stable drying period than

"'""..--.....
60.00
2 50.00
~ dryers using solar energy only, or it saves much more energy
than dryers using electricity only. In the experimental
~
~

..
.3 40.00
~ condition, with a normal clear day, the contribution from
§ 30.00
solar energy is up to around 60% of the total energy
0;
f- -+- Tcollector
20.00
........ Tambien t
consumption. This gives the high possibility of saving and
10.00
+ Tadual lowers down the cost. Besides, the design is simple to make
0.00 and easy to use, which is very much applicable in Vietnam
and other developing countries.
Time (hom's)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Figure 7. Solar radiation The author would like to share thanks to Ho Chi Minh
(T,otu,l- actual hot air temperature when entering chambers; Twlleoto,-
City University of Technology and Education for its
temperature at collector surface; T,mbient- ambient temperature) supports to complete this research work.
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