Utilization of Solar Energy for Drying Applications | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

In many countries of the world, the use of solar thermal systems in the agricultural area to conserve vegetables, fruits, coffee and other crops has shown to be practical, economical and the responsible approach environmentally. Solar energy is freely available during day time, while it's not available in the night, which is the major drawback for such type of the systems. Developing efficient and inexpensive energy storage devices using through phase change materials (PCMs) in solar dryers, which can play an important role in energy conservation to fill the gap in between energy supply/demand and important as developing new sources of energy. Also the PCMs storage integrated with a solar dryer for drying of fruits and vegetable and other food products is found to be promising low cost option for preservations. Therefore, in this paper, an attempt has been taken to summarize the investigation of the solar drying system incorporating with PCMs for drying agricultural food products and also the development of the PCMs for these applications at NCEL, RGIPT, Rae Bareli, U.P., India.