Thermal Testing Methods for Solar Dryers

Solar food drying is a complex heat and mass transfer phenomena which depend on a number of drying process-dependent parameters such as operating conditions and characteristics of the food product to be dried. The variation in these parameters significantly affects the overall performance of the dryer system. Since commercial growth and acceptance of any solar dryer system momentously depend on its performance guarantee, the development of a standard methodology for their thermal testing has become necessary. The standard testing method not only provides better performance management of the dryer system but allows the manufacturers to achieve competitive efficiency and good product quality by comparing the available designs. In this chapter, an extensive review of solar dryer performance evaluation has been carried out. Furthermore, the chapter describes the existing testing procedures for the most common designs of solar dryers and the related practices used in the measurement, evaluation, and description of overall performance, including a variety of food product dried in scientific investigations.