Experimental Performance Analysis Of Free And Forced Fully Developed Air Flow Green House Solar Dryer Using Curry Leaves

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ramco Institute of Technology, Rajapalayam, Tamil Nadu, India
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam, Tamil Nadu, India
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

^* Corresponding author: ashokkumar@ritrjpm.ac.in

Abstract

The world is beginning to move away from its consumption of fossil fuels. Various technologies are being developed to make use of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and tidal, etc. Solar energy is the best choice among these sources because of it is readily available, abundant, and capable of producing both electric energy and space heating. Solar energy can be used directly or indirectly to dry agricultural and non-agricultural products to preserve them for long a period without formation of fungi. Drying of herbal leaves is an important process in Siddha and Ayurvedic industries to produce herbal medicines in power form. However, as herbal leaves are dried in the open sun, they are susceptible to environmental factors such as rain, insects, and livestock. These disadvantages of open-air drying shall be overwhelmed by greenhouse solar dryer. Greenhouse solar dryer with natural convection, forced convection with hot air supply are the existing methods, but when supplied with hot air, the rise in temperature leads to nutrient loss in herbal leaves. In order to avoid this loss in nutrients, the current work gives a solution that the temperature of forced convection greenhouse dryer can be reduced and controlled by supplying the ambient air at inlet flow in a fully developed air region, and this method can also leads to reduction in colour loss with possibly same or higher drying rate compare to natural convection greenhouse dryer.