An environmental and economic evaluation of solar photovoltaic thermal dryer

Abstract

The up-gradation of the conventional indirect mode forced convection solar dryer to Photovoltaic thermal (PVT) based solar dryer is advantageous in terms of energysaving ability, efficiency, self-sufficient design, and ability to work without any additional electrical energy requirement. However, there is a requirement for a comprehensive analysis of the energy, exergy, and environ-economic parameters for developing an efficient and sustainable PVT solar dryer. In this study, a PVT based indirect mode solar dryer has been fabricated and investigated in the environmental conditions of North-East India (Silchar latitude of 24.83°). Experiments were performed to compare the drying characteristics of tomatoes (solanum lycopersicum) under open sun and solar drying conditions. A new mathematical drying model was proposed to predict the drying characteristics of tomato under both the modes of drying. The average PVT dryer efficiency was found to be 34.98%, higher than some of the published works of indirect mode solar dryer conducted under similar experimental conditions. The calculated values of drying effectiveness, collector efficiency factor, coefficient of performance, and heat utilization factor were 1.12-1.58, 0.011-0.029, 0.71, and 0.29, respectively. Furthermore, CO 2 emission, CO 2 mitigation, carbon credit earned parameters were evaluated for 10, 20, and 30 years of system life.

Solar Energy: Applications, Trends Analysis, Bibliometric Analysis and Research Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

“…Solar radiation can be turned into thermal energy (heat) or electrical energy, with the former being more straightforward [7], as the heat emitted from the sun is used directly for heating purposes for a long time. However, solar heat (thermal energy) can be used in so many different applications and ways in our current time, as the technology for solar collectors and dryers has improved drastically, as can be seen from the literature [4,[8][9][10][11].…”

Analysis of the Heat Transfer Coefficient, Thermal Effusivity and Mathematical Modelling of Drying Kinetics of a Partitioned Single Pass Low-Cost Solar Drying of Cocoyam Chips with Economic Assessments

“…This is important to prevent postharvest losses of agricultural produce owing to primitive methods of post-harvest handling and storage. The drying of agricultural products happens to be the first unit operation in the preservation and storage of most agricultural products to enhance their shelf-life [3]. Drying removes the moisture from the product to a stable level where microbes that cause deterioration might not thrive.…”

Electrical and Thermal Performances of a Single-Pass Double-Flow Photovoltaic-Thermal Collector Coupled with Nonuniform Cross-Section Rib

“…In the current study, the matrix inversion technique was used to determine the temperature for each component of SPDFPVTC with NUCSR. Equations ( 4), ( 5), ( 9), ( 13), ( 14), ( 17), (20), and ( 24) can be rearranged in 8 × 8 matrix form (½A½T = ½B) as follows:…”

“…Al-Damook et al [19] optimized SPDFPVTC using CFD analysis and found that the electrical and thermal efficiencies were 50.1% and 10.5%, respectively, with optimized parameters. Gupta et al [20] developed a solar dryer using the PVTC having a wavy-shaped absorber plate. This study presented the daily performance of the proposed PVTC and reported that the electrical and thermal efficiencies varied from 12.28 to 14.27% and 23.89% to 62.37%, respectively.…”