Characteristics of Different Systems for the Solar Drying of Crops

Solar dryers are used to enable the preservation of agricultural crops, food processing industries for dehydration of fruits and vegetables, fish and meat drying, dairy industries for production of milk powder, seasoning of wood and timber, textile industries for drying of textile materials. The fundamental concepts and contexts of their use to dry crops is discussed in the chapter. It is shown that solar drying is the outcome of complex interactions particular between the intensity and duration of solar energy, the prevailing ambient relative humidity and temperature, the characteristics of the particular crop and its pre-preparation and the design and operation of the solar dryer

Performance analysis of a solar pond

In this contribution, we develop a theoretical solar pond in different geometries for the Adiyaman region in Turkey and analyze its performance assessment through energy efficiency. Some key parameters such as surface area, depth, densities of the layers, the thicknesses of the inner zones and the insulations of the walls to assess the solar pond are considered. In the parametric studies, the dimensions of the zones (e.g., upper convective zone, non-convective zone, and lowconvective zone) are varied to investigate their effects. Although the density and temperature gradient of the inner zones are considered similar to each other, the energy efficiencies of the storage zones become different due to varying dimensions of the pond. The shading area decreases by increasing the surface area of the inner zones. The amount of incoming solar energy to the upper surface is increased with the size of the solar pond. The energy efficiency of the solar pond is determined to be maximum (31.76 %) for case4a, and to be minimum (16.80 %) for case1b in August. As a result, through careful determination of the dimensions and insulation parameters, incoming solar radiation reaching the storage zone increases the energy efficiency of the solar pond. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014