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

Optimized V‐Doped Defective TiO2/α‐(Fe2O3)1‐x(Cr2O3)x Heterojunctions for Photo‐Assisted Supercapacitor Devices: Insights on the Materials Integrity and Dual Conversion‐Storage Mechanism

Abstract Energy conversion and storage integrated power units suffer from multiple engineering issues. Replacing two devices (solar cell and supercapacitor assembly) with one device (photo‐enhanced supercapacitor‐ PSC) requires materials with emerged dual solar‐electrochemical storage attributes. Herein, a propitious approach is developed to fabricate all visible light‐enhanced semisolid flexible PCS. Nanoflakes‐based p‐n junction α‐(Fe2O3)1‐x(Cr2O3)x photocathode is synthesized directly on industrial waste stainless steel mesh (316L‐SS). Alongside, three TiO2‐based electrodes are utilized as positive photoactive electrodes. Tuning the optical properties of TiO2 is displayed via doping with mixed valence vanadium (V4+/V5+) together with thermal hydrogen annealing. This is revealed via the reduction of the bandgap energy from 2.89 to 2.15 eV, which can be ascribed to the induced oxygen vacancies. The device can sustain up to 1.6 V potential window with 91% stability after 350 successive charge/discharge cycles with the possibility of performance regeneration to its 100% retention. An illustration of the photo‐storage mechanism is proposed based on the X–ray photoelectron spectroscopy, X–ray crystallography, and band position/alignment results. Quasi‐reversible water splitting/formation is concluded as the main storage mechanism in the semisolid state electrolyte under illumination conditions

Fabrication of polyhedral Cu–Zn oxide nanoparticles by dealloying and anodic oxidation of German silver alloy for photoelectrochemical water splitting

A significant effort has been dedicated to the synthesis of Cu–Zn oxide nanoparticles as a robust photocathode material for photoelectrochemical water splitting. Cu–Zn oxide nanoparticles were formed by controlled anodization of German silver (Cu–Zn–Ni) alloy in an aqueous electrolyte. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrates the dependence of the obtained nanostructures on the anodization time. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed the formation of copper oxide (CuO) and zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles with good stability. This was also confirmed by the compositional X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The obtained polyhedral nanoparticles showed high optical activity with adequate bandgap energy. These optimized nanoparticles achieved boosted photocurrent of − 0.55 mA/cm2 at − 0.6 V vs. SCE under AM 1.5 illumination, confirming the role of the optimized dealloying and thermal treatment in tuning the photoelectrochemical performance of the material