Tropical field performance of dual-pass PV tray dryer

• Main Authors: Iskandar, A. Noor, Ya’acob, M. E., Anuar, M. S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/1.5002210

Solar Photovoltaic technology has become the preferable solution in many countries around the globe to solve the ever increasing energy demand of the consumers. In line with the consumer need, food processing technology has huge potentials of integration with the renewable energy resources especially in drying process which consumes the highest electricity loads. Traditionally, the solar dryer technology was applied in agriculture and food industries utilizing the sun’s energy for drying process, but this is highly dependable on the weather condition and surrounding factors. This work shares some field performance of the new design of portable dual-pass PV tray dryer for drying crops in an enclosed system. The dual-pass PV tray dryer encompass a lightweight aluminium box structure with dimensions of 1.1m (L) x 0.6m (W) x 0.2m (H) and can hold a load capacity of 300g – 3kg of crop depending on the types of the crops. Experiments of field performance monitoring were conducted in October –November 2016 which justifies a considerable reduction in time and crops quality improvement when using the dual-pass PV tray dryer as compared to direct-sun drying.