Application of Solar Energy in Drying Pepper

Drying is an important and key preservation technique in processing agricultural
product. In today’s globalization era where food and agriculture product is given great
emphasis, the producers and consumers is expecting a better and advanced technology
drying technique that utilizes the free renewable and sustainable environmental friendly
energy like solar. With this in view, a research based study of solar application in drying
the agricultural product with specification to the pepper industry, was carried out. The
aim of the study is to design a feasible solar dryer for the small producer. The project
scopes include the design development of an active mixed mode solar dryer equipped
with the thermal storage for a continuous operation. Thus, in order to reach the project’s
scopes and objective, all the design processes such as identification of dryer’s
requirements, conceptual design, stating the design constraint, design calculation,
specification of dryer and the economic evaluation had been accomplished. Result
shows that the mixed mode designed dryer which equipped with the 7.46m² solar air
collector, 0.13m vertical rock bed thermal storage, 12V fan PV powered and 0.475m
vertical drying chamber is able to dry 100 kg of fresh pepper berries in two days
continuous operation. With four years of payback period, the dryer can be very
economical and valuable investment for the producers.