PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOLAR BIOMASS HYBRID AIR DRYER

Abstract

Solar air dryer is one of the useful technologies in agriculture sector. In hot climatic countries like India solar Air dryer can play vital role in drying of different foods, crops as well as different industrial process. Renewable energy technologies can be used for drying of grains. Maize has been selected as the grain in present stage to exploit solar drying technologies. Proposed system of hybrid drying system is integration of solar thermal air heating system, air heating using suitable heat exchanger based on biomass burning to maintain continuous drying process. The proposed system will help at a large to solve the current problems of food wastages. In the present work Renewable Energy solar biomass hybrid air dryer was tested for drying maize. The main objective of present study is to assess the performance of the system. Experimental results show that Solar hybrid system using biomass as a fuel for cross flow heat exchanger has reduced time of drying maize. For only solar hot air drying time reduced from 72 to 33 hours and for solar hybrid drying time reduced from 72 to 15 hours.