Energy and exergy analysis of solar dryer with triple air passage direction collector powered by a wind generator

Abstract

The objective of this study is to thermodynamically investigate the performance of solar dryers by delaying the airflow in the collector. For this reason, a triple air path on a single pass collector with the fan powered by a wind generator was developed and evaluated in a very humid climate. The evaluation parameters were drying efficiency, energy and exergy analysis, sustainability assessment, CO 2 mitigation ability and effective moisture diffusivity of dried product. The results showed that the collector efficiency of triple air passage path collector designs improved the direct passage collector by 119%. The overall collector and drying efficiencies were 8.43% and 2.6% higher than the direct flow path collector. The specific energy consumption was 1.1033 kWh/kg while the specific moisture extraction rate was obtained as 0.273 kg/kW, respectively. The average exergy efficiency ranged between 38.09 and 63.81% while the waste exergy ratio, improvement potential and sustainability index for the three dryers ranged from 0.00 to 1.13, 7.54 × 10 –7 to 2.003 kW and 0.00 to 11.47, respectively. Using the solar dryers instead of the coal-powered dryer will mitigate more CO 2 into the atmosphere in the range of 9741.334 to 21,481. 476 tons of CO 2 per year while using grid-based electricity will limit the least amount of CO 2 in the range of 12.981 to 14.153351.50 tons of CO 2 per year.