Design and Development of Solar Dryer

       India is one of the world largest producer of many fruits and vegetables, but there still exists huge gap between per capita demand and supply due to enormous waste during post harvest storage and handling, lack of temperature controlled vehicles, unavailability of cold storage facilities in various parts of country for preserving the produce.To reduce this waste the food products are dried in the dryer which increase their life by removing the moisture content.        Earth receives on immense amount of energy from sun in the form of radiation this solar energy can be used to dry the food products efficiently. A solar dryer is an enclosed unit which is used to dry agricultural products. In this project a hybrid forced as well as natural convection solar dryer is designed and tested to reduce the time required to dry different food products like grapes, tomatoes,red chillis etc. The grapes contain about 85 to 90% water. As it contains more amount of moisture content as compared to other food products,grape is choosen as primary test sample.       The main idea of this project is to help farmers reduce their wastage of food and dry the grapes in less time as possible. We used phase change material inside the collector tank(Paraffin wax). The PCM tank itself is a innovative design, fins are provided for better heat absorption and dissipation. Solar panels are also used to collect the solar energy and convert into electricity, which is stored in battteries and then used to power the blowers and IR(heating) lights in the night time.Modelling is done in Catia V5 software.         Various sensors like thermocouple,airflow meter,humidity sensor are installed inside the cabin to monitor and controll the various conditions like temperature and airflow in the cabin. A central computer Arduino or raspberry is used to maintain the temperature. The real time data can be sent and monitered using a smartphone remotely using IOT(Internet of things).