Some Engineering Factors Affecting Utilization of Solar Energy in Drying Tomato Fruits

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

1 Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Aswan University, Aswan 81528, Egypt

2 Soils and Water Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University, Assiut 71526, Egypt

3 Agricultural Products Process Engineering Department, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11751, Egypt

Abstract

Tomato fruit (TF) is considered one of the most cultivated and consumed vegetables around the world, and it is characterized by a high content of vitamins and mineral elements. Therefore, the current study focused on studying the different engineering factors through which the use of solar energy in drying TF can be maximized. The TF were dried using a solar dryer (SD) attached to a fixed solar collector and another SD attached to a solar collector integrated with an automatic sun tracking system . The field experiments were done at three drying air velocities of 1, 1.5, and 2 m/s and three slice thicknesses of 4, 6, and 8 mm. The results showed that the ASCT reaches a peak air temperature of 65°C, while the FSC reaches a peak air temperature of 55°C. This 10°C difference in air temperature can have a significant impact on drying times, which led to an increase in the thermal efficiency of the SC equipped with an ASCT by about 17% compared to the traditional FSC. The maximum efficiency of the PV system was about 17% at 8.0 a.m. In addition, the ASCT samples dry more quickly than the FSC samples at all AV. On SD merged with ASCT, the TF samples dried for 5–8 hours reached EMC; whereas, on SD merged with FSC, the TF samples dried for 6–10 hours reached EMC. This indicates that the time needed to dry TF slices was reduced by 20% to 25% when the developed ASCT was used.

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