Drying of agricultural products using solar energy is a method for preservation that has been used for centuries all over the world. This method has been effective especially in tropical and subtropical climates, due to the great availability to solar energy. The village Edumafa in Ghana has great cultivation of pineapples but has no post harvest process. A post harvest process as drying of pineapples can increase cultivation and introduce a new product to be sold at the market. This thesis is investigating the possibility of drying pineapples in coastal Ghanaian climate including both experimental method and simulation. A well functioning solar dryer is constructed based on literature study, which after the dryer is studied in simulated environment. Modifications on the model based on the actual dryer are simulated focusing on the temperature and air velocity distribution. The experimental study results in drying pineapple slices corresponding to eight pineapples in two days. Simulation of the solar collector shows that increased temperature at the end of the solar collector can be achieved when decreasing inclination and decreasing the size of the energy storage layer. Simulation of the drying chamber results in improved distribution of temperature and air velocity inside the drying chamber, providing improved drying conditions with increased inlet size and added flow disturbance. Further studies based on this thesis would be a study of adjustable thickness of the energy storage, and transient simulation. Adjustable thickness of the energy storage and air duct on a experimental dryer could improve the drying in undesirable weather conditions, why a study of defining the optimal adjustment thicknesses for different weather conditions could be of interest. Transient simulation of the drying process accounting for the weather change could improve the drying, since the geometry changes could be made and the drying process studied directly in the simulation tool before building the actual dryer. Transient study of the drying process could even study the effect of different thicknesses of the pineapple slices during drying.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-15166 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Bogojevic, Ivana |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för teknik- och naturvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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