• Mr. Janakgar Z. Goswami
• Prof. Bharat S. Patel
• Dr. Jayantilal P. Hadiya

Solar drying techniques reduce post-harvest food spoilage due to its extra moisture content. Drying by fossil fuels is cause pollution, but solar is clean and green energy source, so the use of solar for drying does not harm the environment. In the past 2-3 decades, the researchers appreciate the thermal energy storage (TES) techniques in solar dryers as conventional solar dryers work only during sunshine hours. Researchers have tested a TES material on a particular dryer setup. As many different types of TES materials are available, in the present study three different TES materials namely sodium acetate trihydrate (SAT), ferrous sulfate heptahydrate (FSH), and stearic acid (SA) are tested and compared on indirect type solar dryer setup. In addition, the performance of TES materials is compared with solar dryer without TES material. A series of experiments were conducted to study the impact of mass flow rates. We found that the use of TES material is increased the drying rate, and the overall drying rate increases by increasing the flow rate of circulating air in the drying chamber. The experiments were carried out to dry potato fries in an 8kg batch. The batch size is fixed for all experiments. As results, we found FSH is not compatible with the system as it has corrosive effect, SA gives 7% more drying rate compared to SAT, but the SA material cost is seven times higher than SAT, so in the cost aspect, the SAT is considered as TES material.

Solar dryer, PCM, Thermal Energy Storage, Salt hydrates, Fatty acid

"Comparative Experimental Performance Evaluation of Solar Dryer With Various Phase Change Materials", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 8, page no.a960-a969, August-2021, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2108126.pdf

"Comparative Experimental Performance Evaluation of Solar Dryer With Various Phase Change Materials", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.8, Issue 8, page no. ppa960-a969, August-2021, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2108126.pdf