Performance Assessment of Affordable Solar Dehydrator for Sustainable Energy

Abstract

Dehydration has long been the preferred method of food preservation over all other techniques. In contrast to other techniques, dehydration uses heat to evaporate extra water from food. This can be simply obtained through solar energy. This work aims to apply appropriate engineering methods to use solar energy for food dehydration efficiently. This work prioritizes both food quality and cost equally. In addition, it features a backup system that operates at night to continuously dehydrate food items with drying times longer than 12 hours, in contrast to previous approaches that are either costly or result in lower-quality products. So, the solar collector is designed at an optimum angle of 27ᵒ with an area of 0.5153 m² to collect useful heat from the sun that develops enough temperature difference to dehydrate some selected food. Experiment results show that the desired purpose is greatly achieved by comparing the dehydrated products with the conventional or commercially available products.