Hybrid Solar Dryer with Biomass Integration

A mixed mode hybrid solar dryer with biomass integration has been designed, constructed and evaluated. The usage of solar heating for drying application is suffering from non-continuous availability of the solar radiation especially during the cloudy days and at night. This project is aiming to carry out experimental investigation of a solar dryer performance using solar as main input and biomass burner as auxiliary source of energy to compensate the solar radiation. Several design criteria has been applied to the hybrid solar dryer and the biomass burner so that it can be used to dry for various types of materials. The major components of the fabricated dryer in this work are biomass burner (with a combination of 2 fixtures), solar collector and drying chamber (with a conventional solar chimney). The dryer was fabricated using simple materials, tools and skills, and was tested in three modes of operation (solar drying mode, biomass drying mode and combiner drying mode) by drying 200g of empty fruit bunch (EFB) on each of the 5 trays. Results show that the combination of hybrid solar with biomass dryer is the most effective way for drying process. The moisture content reduction is nearly 50% within 2 hours. Thus, the objectives the project to validate the used of biomass backup heater has been achieved. Further improvements to the system design are suggested.