Vaibhav Tidke

Solar Drying is an improvement to Open Sun Drying, where one can partially control air flow rate, temperature and humidity. Solar Dryers lead to more hygienic products with almost nil contamination, faster drying rates and better quality products. They are either electricity operated forced convection or natural convection based. Forced convection based dryer offer flexibility over air flow and gives better drying rate than natural convection. On the other hand, natural convection based dryer rely on thermosyphon principle and density difference, and can generate comparatively smaller air flow rate.

            Present project aims at studying flow characteristics of solar dryers to get into details of flow patterns and effect on drying. Final objective is optimization of parameters using CFD to yield better drying processes.