Sustainable Solar Dryer Setup for Healthy and Efficient Drying of Food for OIC Member State

Abstract

Solar dryers are used to eliminate the moisture content from crops, vegetables, and fruits by utilizing solar energy to heat up air and to dry any agricultural crops. This helps in reducing wastage of agricultural product and helps in preservation of agricultural products. But it also makes transportation of such dried products easy and promotes the health and welfare of the people. Until today in remote small communities, not only in the third world regions, but also in the western countries, people take advantage of the direct sun light to dry and preserve agricultural corps. Solar drying is not yet widely commercialized based on the limitations of the natural sun drying e.g., exposure to direct sunlight, liability to pests and rodents lack of proper monitoring and the escalated cost of the mechanical dryer. A solar dryer is therefore developed to cater for this limitation. The purpose of this project is to improve food drying quality, and to cater for the limitation of the direct sun drying. The dryer is composed of solar collector, and a solar drying chamber constraining rack of four trays both being integrated together. The air enters in through air inlet, is heated up in the solar collector and channeled through the drying chamber where it is utilized in drying. There are different types of dryers and have their performance is differing as per the food and environment, A product like pepper, turmeric, chili, fruits and vegetables like mango, grapes, banana, papa