Momordica

Engineering

Cabinet (room)

Biology

Geotechnical engineering

Materials science

Exergy efficiency

Forced convection

Solar dryer

Solar energy

Mechanical engineering

Thermodynamics

Physics

Mass flow rate

Bitter gourd

Mathematics

Process engineering

Environmental science

Horticulture

Medicine

Tray

Meteorology

Water content

Convection

Thermal energy storage

Pulp and paper industry

Traditional medicine

Exergy

Electrical engineering

Energy

Drying uniformity and flexibility in product selection are the primary concern for the end-user in solar drying application. Hence, the present work attempts to determine the user flexibility to choose among different agro-products and simultaneously ensure the drying uniformity inside an active multi-tray indirect-mode solar cabinet dryer. The work considers unripe untreated banana and bitter gourd with an average initial moisture content of 180% (db) and 1328% (db), respectively. The present work tries to assess the influence of a tray-sequencing pattern on the drying behavior at different combinations of flake thickness (0.002 − 0.004 m), multi-tray spacing (0.1 − 0.15 m), tray mesh size (0.01 − 0.015 m), and mass flow rate (0.015 − 0.03 kg/s). For all the tested combinations, the proposed tray sequencing aided to achieve drying uniformity for banana flakes within 10 h and bitter gourd by 18 h. Energy utilization ratio (45.3% − 47.9%) and exergy loss decreased with an increase in mass flow rate. Among the tested combination, 0.03 kg/s, 0.002 m thickness, 0.15 m spacing, and 0.01 m mesh size resulted in higher average energy efficiency (15.34%), and exergy efficiency (60.3 − 94.1%). Further investigations on the proposed dryer are essential to bring out a suitable standardization to attain an upper limit among the agro-products.

Drying of untreated Musa nendra and Momordica charantia in a forced convection solar cabinet dryer with thermal storage