Abstract
A walk in type hemi cylindrical solar tunnel has been built with heat protective north wall at College of Dairy and Food Science Technology, Udaipur, India for drying agriculture & horticulture product on large scale. In this paper attempt has been made to evaluate the performance of developed dryer to dry the Thompson seedless grapes (mutant: Sonaka). The study show that chemically untreated grapes took seven days to dry at 16% (wb) moisture content. The temperature gradient inside the tunnel dryer is about 10–28°C during the clear day, which is quite enough to dry agricultural commodities.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Saywell, L.G., The Effect of Grapes and Grape Products on Urinary Acidity, 1932, vol. 5(2), pp. 103–120.
Ramos, I.N., Silva, C.L.M., Sereno, A.M., and Aguilera, J.M., Quantification of a Micro Structural Changes during First Stage Air Drying of Grape Tissue, J. Food Eng., 2004, vol. 62, pp. 159–164.
Pangavhane, D.R. and Sawhney, R.L., Review of Research and Development Work on Solar Dryers for Grape Drying, Energy Conversion and Management, 2002, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 45–61.
Fadhel, A., Kooli, S., Farhat, A., and Bellghith, A., Study of the Solar Drying of Grapes by Three Different Processes, Desalination, 2005, vol. 185, nos. 1–3, pp. 535–541.
Forson, F.K., Nazha, M.A.A., and Afuffo, F.O., Natural Convection Solar Crop Dryers of Commercial Scale in Ghana: Design, Construction and Performance, Ambient Energy, 1996, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 123–130.
Bena, B. and Fuller, R.J., Natural Convection Solar Dryer with Biomass Back-up Heater, Solar Energy, 2002, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 75–83.
Chua, K.J. and Chou, S.K., Low Cost Drying Methods for Developing Countries, Trends Food Sci. Tech., 2003, vol. 14, no. 12, pp. 519–528.
Chen, H., Hernandez, C.E., and Huang, T.A., Study of the Drying Effect on Lemon Slices Using a Closed-Type Solar Dryer, Solar Energy, 2005, vol. 78, no. 1, pp. 97–103.
Sacilik, K., Keskin, R., and Elicin, A., Mathematical Modeling of Solar Tunnel Drying of Thin Layer Organic Tomato, J. Food Eng., 2006, vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 231–238.
Bassey, M.W., Whitfield, M.J.C.C., and Koroma, E.Y., Problems and Solution for Natural-Convection Solar Crop Drying, in Proc. of a Workshop on Solar Drying in Africa, Bassey, M.W., and Schmidt, O.G., Eds., Dakar, 1986, pp. 207–232.
Hossain, M.A., Woodsm J.L., and Bala, B.K., Simulation of Solar Drying of Chili in Solar Tunnel Drier, Int. J. Sustainable Energy, 2004, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 143–153.
Lutz, K. and Muhlbauer, W., Solar Tunnel Dryer with integrated Collector, Drying Tech., 1986, vol. 4, pp. 583–603.
Fuller, R.J. and Charters, W.W.S., Performance of a Solar Tunnel Dryer with Microcomputer Control, Solar Energy, 1997, vol. 59, nos. 4–6, pp. 151–154.
Farhat, A., Kooli, S., Kerkeni, C., et al., Validation of a Pepper Drying Model in Polyethylene Tunnel Greenhouse, Int. J. Thermal Sci., 2004, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 53–58.
Usub, T., Lertsatitthanakorn, C., Poomsaad, N., Wiset, L., et al., Experimental Performance of a Solar Tunnel Dryer for Drying Silkworm Pupae, Biosyst. Eng., 2008, vol. 101, pp. 209–216.
Garg, H.P. and Kumar, R., Studies on Semi-Cylindrical Solar Tunnel Dryers: Year Round Collector Performance, Int. J. Energy Res., 1998, vol. 22, pp. 1381–1395.
Ekechukwu, O.V. and Norton, B., Design and Measured Performance of a Solar Chimney for Natural Circulation Solar Energy Dryers, Renewable Energy, 1997, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 81–90.
Jain, D. and Tiwari, G.N., Effect of Greenhouse on Crop Drying under Natural and Forced Convection I: Evaluation of Convective Mass Transfer Coefficient, Energy Conversion and Management, 2004, vol. 45, pp. 765–783.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
The article is published in the original.
About this article
Cite this article
Rathore, N.S., Panwar, N.L. Experimental studies on hemi cylindrical walk-in type solar tunnel dryer for grape drying. Appl. Sol. Energy 45, 269–273 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3103/S0003701X09040100
Received:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3103/S0003701X09040100