ISSN (Online) : 2319 -8753

ISSN (Print) : 2347 - 6710

International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology

Volume 3, Special Issue 3, March 2014

2014 IEEE International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and Technology (ICIET14)

On 21st & 22nd March Organized by
K.L.N. College of Engineering and Technology, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

Development of Solar Dryer Incorporated With

Evacuated Tube Collector
T.Rajagopal1, S.Sivakumar2, R.Manivel3
1, 2, 3

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kumaraguru College of Technology, Coimbatore, india

ABSTRACT - An indirect type forced convection solar dryer is

fabricate with the components like evacuated tube collector,
drying chamber and blower. The performance of the designed
drier is evaluated by carrying drying experiments with copra at
Coimbatore district Tamilnadu, India. A short survey of these
showed that applying the forced convection solar dryer not only
significantly reduced the drying time but also resulted in many
improvements in the quality of the dried products. Solar drying of
copra is carried for forced convection and is compared with
natural convection solar drying. The temperature of the drying
chamber ranges from 49C to 78C for natural and forced
convection while the ambient temperature ranges from 28C to
32C. Initial moisture content of copra ranges from 51.7% to
52.3% and the final moisture content obtained about 7 to 8%. The
forced convection solar dryer takes less time than the natural
convection solar dryer to attain the equilibrium moisture content.
Solar drying copra obtained was free from smoke, dust, bird and
rodent damage.

KEYWORDS: Forced convection, Evacuated tube Collector,

Moisture content.

apart from extended storage life can also improve the

quality, ease of handling, further processing and is
probably the oldest method of food preservation practiced
by humankind.
India stands as the third position in the world for largest
coconut-producing country. Copra is one of the major
traditional products processed from coconuts. Fresh
coconut contains a moisture content of about 52% (wet
basis), which should be reduced down to about 7% by
drying in order to concentrate the oil content. On an
average, 57 coconuts are essential to produce 1 kg of
copra, although this depends on the grade of product. The
traditional methods followed in India are sun and kiln
drying. They produce poor-quality copra and also take
time to attain the equilibrium moisture content. In kiln
drying, smoke has direct contact with the coconut and
result as high-quality copra is not produced due to smoke
deposits may form polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in
the copra [1]. Sun drying takes about 7 days and if the
weather is rainy the copra obtained will be contaminated
with fungi which produce a grey rancid product. Moreover
sun drying requires more space, is labour intensive and
there can be produce low quality copra from deposits of
dirt and dust. Also, microorganisms can cause rancidity,
increase the acid content, and reduce the amount of oil
extracted from the product resulting in low-quality coconut
oil. The oil extracted from poor-quality copra also requires
additional refinement to meet international standards.
Several experimental and theoretical studies have been
reported on the development of various types of solar
driers for drying agricultural products [2].

I.
INTRODUCTION
Preservation of fruits, vegetables, and food are essential
to keeping them for a long time without deterioration in
the quality of the product. The more number of process
technologies have been employed on an industrial scale to
preserve food products; the important ones are canning,
freezing, and dehydration. Among these, drying which is
suitable for developing countries with low-temperature and
less thermal processing facilities. It offers a most effective
and practical way of preservation to reduce losses during
postharvest and offset the shortages in supply. Drying is a
simple process of removing moisture from a product in
order to reach the equilibrium moisture content and is an
energy intensive operation. The main objective of drying
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Development of Solar Dryer Incorporated with Evacuated Tube Collector

Drying plays a major role in which the free water
molecules are removed leaving the essential bound water
molecules. The ancient method used to preserve food is
natural sun drying. But natural sun drying has many
disadvantages such as uncontrolled drying, contamination
by birds, insects and dust, climatic adversities etc. The
quality of the product is found to be less and cannot be
exported. It also requires more labour and the process is
found to be slow. The main objective of the present work
was to improve the quality of copra produced in a forced
convection solar dryer. But it has been reported that the
efficiency of evacuated tube collector is very high as
compared to the efficiency of flat plate collectors.
However, the some experimental works have been taken
on solar evacuated tube dryers [3]. So an attempt has been
made to design and construct a novel solar dryer with
evacuated tube collectors and study its performance on
copra in the district of Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India.
II.

inlet of drying chamber. The blower is attached at the inlet

of the drying collector for conducting the experiment of
forced convection.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A. Measuring Instruments and Devices

A digital anemometer is used to measure ambient
temperature and wind velocity. A solarimeter is a
pyranometer of silicon pn junction type of measuring
device used to measure combined direct and diffuse
radiation. The samples are weighed in hourly basis using a
digital electronic balance with an accuracy of one
milligram. The humidity of the ambient air was calculated
by using psychometric chart with the help of measured wet
and dry bulb temperatures recorded by respective mercury
thermometers during the experiments.
B. Experimental Setup
The indirect type forced convection solar dryer is
mainly constructed with four essential features namely, the
blower, the evacuated tube collector, the drying chamber
and the chimney. Fig. 1 shows the section of the solar
dryer. The drying chamber is made of stainless steel sheets
of thickness 27.5mm and insulated on all sides with rock
wool slab to prevent a loss of heat. It consists of two
perforated trays as top and bottom tray to place the product
to be dried. It consists of six evacuated tube collectors with
a copper header for transfer of heat to the inlet air drying
collector. The double layer glass evacuated tube collector
is about 1.6mm thickness and the gap between the glass
tubes is evacuated. Heat loss due to convection,
conduction and radiation is thus minimized and it can
withstand high temperature due to this technology. The
collector is placed along N-S direction, facing south so as
to track maximum solar radiation during the day time. The
evacuated tube collector is used as air heater which
connected to the drying collector with the help of EPDM
(Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer) rubber hose. The
hot air from the drying collector outlet is connected to the
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Fig. 1 Indirect type forced convection solar dryer

C. Experimental Procedure
Broken copras are uniformly spread in the trays and
are kept inside the chamber for solar drying. In the
designed solar dryer, air is blown into the evacuated tube
collector with the help of the external device blower. The
solar radiation falling on the collector, the collector gets
heated up and transfers heat to the air flowing through the
drying collector. This hot air enters the inlet of the drying
chamber where copra is loaded in two trays. The moving
hot air evaporates the water content (moisture) of the copra
under the basic mechanism of removal of moisture from
the surface of the product to the surrounding followed by
the removal of moisture from inside the product to the
surface [4]. The velocity of the air at the tray was adjusted
by using a control valve. During the experiments,
temperatures at various locations in the solar collector and
the drier chamber, ambient dry and wet bulb temperatures
were measured at hourly intervals. The relative humidity
of air was calculated from measured wet and dry bulb
temperatures using a psychometric chart. After the
moisture content was reduced to 40%, the copra kernels
were scooped from the shells and dried further without
shells. Moisture contents were determined by using Eq.
(2). Experiments were only conducted during daylight
hours. The readings are taken on hourly basis from
10.00am to 3.00pm until copra attained equilibrium
moisture content.

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Development of Solar Dryer Incorporated with Evacuated Tube Collector

D. Analytical Calculation

1) Determination of Moisture Loss

Moisture loss of drying product copra every hour
using the below formula [4],
ML = Mt - Md
(1)
The initial Mt, and final mass Md, of the samples were
recorded with the help of electronic balance.

2) Determination of Moisture Content

The quantity of moisture present in a material can
be represented on wet basis and expressed as
percentage. The moisture content, Mwb, on wet basis was
calculated by using Eq. (2). The procedure was repeated
for every one hour interval till the end of drying.

3) Determination of Drying Rate

The drying rate, DR, should be proportional to the
difference in moisture content between material to be
dried and the equilibrium moisture content [5].

Fig. 2 Variation of Drying air temperature at outlet of

collector Vs Drying time for natural convection.
Variation of moisture content with respect to drying
time until to reach the equilibrium moisture content for
natural circulation which takes four days is shown in Fig.
4. The initial moisture content of the copra around 52%
and obtained the final moisture content as 7.1%.

Where, dM Mass loss of the crop

dt Drying time
III.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Temperature variations of the designed solar dryer

natural circulation for four days on hourly basis from
10.00a.m to 3.00pm during the experimentation for natural
circulation are shown in Fig.2. The maximum temperature
of 78oc was observed and average temperature recorded at
the outlet of the drying collector was 64 oc. It is observed
that the temperature inside the drying chamber is higher
during the mid-noon time.

Fig. 3 Variation of Drying air temperature at outlet of

collector Vs Drying time for forced convection.

The variation of air temperature at outlet of collector

with respect to drying time on hourly intervals for different
days with forced convection is shown in Fig.3. The
minimum and maximum temperature was recorded during
the forced convection is 48 oc and 68oc respectively. The
temperature variation is due to the change in solar
radiation intensity which is measured by using the
instrument pyranometer.

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Development of Solar Dryer Incorporated with Evacuated Tube Collector

IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 4 Variation of Moisture content Vs Drying time for

natural circulation.
The variation of moisture content and drying time for
forced convection is shown in Fig.5. The drying time taken
by the designed solar dryer with forced convection to reach
the equilibrium moisture content of copra is less than the
natural convection. The initial moisture content of the
drying product was 52% and reached the final moisture
content as 7.3% which comes under the equilibrium
moisture content. The forced convection has been
conducted with blower with velocity of 1m/s in the inlet of
drying chamber. The moisture content is reduced in the
initial stages well as compared to the lower stage to reach
the equilibrium moisture content. The drying rate decrease
with increase the drying time during the experimental
observation.

In this experimental study, the drying of copra was

investigated under the two different modes as natural and
forced convection. The indirect type forced convection
solar dryer with evacuated tube collector generates air
temperature higher inside the chamber and enhance drying
rate thereby reducing the drying time required to dry a
product. The time taken by the solar dryer with forced
convection to reach desired moisture content is less than
the time required in natural convection. As the solar dryer
using evacuated tube collector can perform better even
during cloudy days and winter season. The designed
indirect type solar dryer utilized the more solar thermal
energy as a result obtained as reducing the time required to
dry the copra and also improves the quality of the drying
product.
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Fig. 5 Variation of Moisture content Vs Drying time for

forced circulation.
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