Design and simulation of a solar dryer for agriculture products Original Research Article

The aim of this work is to study a simple efficient and inexpensive solar batch dryer for agriculture products. During periods of low sunshine a heater is used. The establishment of heat and mass balances leads to two sets of differential equations completed by an empirical model, which represents the drying kinetics. Onion was chosen as the dried product because of its swift deterioration property. The shrinking effect has been taken into consideration. The results showed that drying is affected by the surface of the collector, the air temperature and the product characteristics. Significant improvements were registered in the results, after the heater is added.