{"title":"Prototype and model of passive tropical fruit dryer utilizing a flexible transpired solar collector","authors":"Samantha Huselstein, S. J. Weinstein, R. Stevens","doi":"10.1109/GHTC.2016.7857372","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We explore a novel drying system to preserve tropical fruits, motivated by the needs of a rural farming co-op in Haiti. Most solar drying technologies rely on glazed collectors, but these are not readily accessible in rural communities. A low cost and low maintenance prototype drying system is designed, built and tested. The system comprises a transpired solar absorber made from cheap landscape fabric, a drying chamber, and a chimney. The drying chamber houses the fruit and the chimney induces airflow. In tests on thinly sliced bananas, the novel collector efficiency regularly exceeds 50% with an average temperature rise from inlet to outlet of the device of over 20°C. In one test, 4kg of banana slices per square meter of absorber area are dried from an average moisture content of 73wt% to 8wt% over two days. A preliminary mathematical model for the entire drying system is developed that agrees favorably with experiments.","PeriodicalId":74562,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings. IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference","volume":"105 1","pages":"815-816"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2016-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings. IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1109/GHTC.2016.7857372","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
We explore a novel drying system to preserve tropical fruits, motivated by the needs of a rural farming co-op in Haiti. Most solar drying technologies rely on glazed collectors, but these are not readily accessible in rural communities. A low cost and low maintenance prototype drying system is designed, built and tested. The system comprises a transpired solar absorber made from cheap landscape fabric, a drying chamber, and a chimney. The drying chamber houses the fruit and the chimney induces airflow. In tests on thinly sliced bananas, the novel collector efficiency regularly exceeds 50% with an average temperature rise from inlet to outlet of the device of over 20°C. In one test, 4kg of banana slices per square meter of absorber area are dried from an average moisture content of 73wt% to 8wt% over two days. A preliminary mathematical model for the entire drying system is developed that agrees favorably with experiments.