Experimental Investigation of Solar Crop Dryer

Drying is a method used to process and preserve food products and crops for long time period. Drying of crops/food items in open conditions under the sun was presumably one of the conscious and purposeful technological activity undertaken since long. With the awareness of inadequacies involved in open sun drying like requirement of large area, possibilities of quality degradation due to air pollution and infestation caused by birds/insects and difficulties in controlling the drying process; a more scientific method of solar energy utilization started with the development of solar crop dryer. Mechanized form of dryers involve expensive equipment and require large amount of fuel or electricity. Solar crop drying refers to methods of using sun radiation for drying under controlled conditions and this technology has been rapidly gaining acceptance as safe and energy saving measure in crop drying applications. In the present book, authors reported an experimental investigation on performance of domestic type solar crop dryer with various modifications under both free and forced convection conditions by using ginger and green chilli crops.