Venkatesh R, Sharma Prashant, Subbarao Ch China, Mohanavel Vinayagam, Veerababu Kajuluri, Jadhav Abhilasha, Ravichandran M, Soudagar Manzoore Elahi M, Alotaibi Majed A, Sivanraju Rajkumar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Saveetha School of Engineering, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences (SIMATS), Saveetha University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 602105, India.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, GLA University, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, 281406, India.
Sci Rep. 2025 Aug 28;15(1):31746. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-01555-5.
The increasing adoption of renewable solar energy sources offers significant opportunities for sustainable energy applications due to their economic benefits and the conservation of natural resources with eco-friendly and reduced drying time. Solar dryers play an important role in drying agricultural products; however, it found the challenges of heat loss, instability in varying weather conditions, and limited efficiency during periods of insufficient solar radiation. This study aims to enhance the thermal performance of solar dryers that incorporate paraffin phase change material (PCM) into a fin collector absorber for drying agricultural products, specifically banana and potato slices cut to 2 mm thickness. The investigation was carried out using three different setups: a conventional solar collector (Case 1), a solar collector featuring PCM (Case 2), and a solar collector with both fin and PCM configurations (Case 3). The experimental results reveal that in Case 3, the fin collector with the PCM-configured absorber exhibited the best drying performance among the three setups. It reached an optimal temperature of 60.8 °C, achieving improved moisture ratios of 0.51 for bananas and 0.54 for potatoes. The drying rates recorded for Case 3 were 0.89 kg/h for banana slices and 0.85 kg/h for potato slices. Furthermore, the collector efficiency increased to 75.3% for bananas and 78.7% for potatoes, reflecting improvements of 77% and 43%, respectively, compared to the efficiency of Case 1 (plain absorber).
可再生太阳能资源的日益广泛应用因其经济效益以及在生态友好和缩短干燥时间方面对自然资源的保护，为可持续能源应用提供了重大机遇。太阳能干燥器在农产品干燥中发挥着重要作用；然而，它面临着热损失、不同天气条件下的不稳定性以及太阳辐射不足期间效率有限等挑战。本研究旨在提高太阳能干燥器的热性能，该干燥器将石蜡相变材料（PCM）纳入翅片集热器吸收器中，用于干燥农产品，特别是切成2毫米厚的香蕉片和土豆片。研究使用了三种不同的设置进行：传统太阳能集热器（案例1）、具有PCM的太阳能集热器（案例2）以及具有翅片和PCM配置的太阳能集热器（案例3）。实验结果表明，在案例3中，配置有PCM吸收器的翅片集热器在三种设置中表现出最佳的干燥性能。它达到了60.8°C的最佳温度，香蕉的含水率提高到0.51，土豆的含水率提高到0.54。案例3记录的香蕉片干燥速率为0.89千克/小时，土豆片干燥速率为0.85千克/小时。此外，香蕉的集热器效率提高到75.3%，土豆的集热器效率提高到78.7%，与案例1（普通吸收器）的效率相比，分别提高了77%和43%。
