Development and Performance Analysis of New Solar Dryer with Continuous and Intermittent Ventilation

A new solar dryer has successfully developed that can be operated in two modes of ventilation which are continuous and intermittent. This paper aims to analyse and compare the efficiency of the new solar dryer with the existing dryer. Without load experiment shows that the temperature of the new solar dryer with intermittent mode can increase up to 60◦ C compare to 50◦ C and 40◦ C for the new solar dryer with continuous mode and the current dryer respectively. Furthermore, the intermittent mode shows a saving of 60% on the electrical energy usage compared to continuous mode. The average solar collector efficiency for continuous mode was 0.47 whereas for intermittent mode the efficiency was between 0.1 and 0.4 in no ventilation period and within 0.6 to 0.9 with force ventilation. The drying experiment of Sericite mica shows that the moisture extraction rate (MER) of the current dryer, new solar dryer with continuous and intermittent are 1.46, 1.98 and 3.07 kg/day respectively.