Small Solar Parabolic Dish Concentrators are used with cookers to cook food. The dish is capable of providing temperatures up to 200 degree C at its focal point. I was interested to know if anybody has used the parabolic dish for drying high moisture content fruits and vegetables. If so literature may be shared.
Heat pump dryers assisted by electric resistance air heaters will be good choice. I am not having any journals to justify.
I thing cannot dry any material even with high moisturr content in the parabolic dish because high temperature will affect the content of material like vitamins or manirals. so, I advice you to use the normal dryers like hybrid thermal solar dryer.
Drying of food crops above 100 deg C is not advisable. It is better to maintain around 60-70 deg C consistently.
Dear Jairaj,
I did not find any paper in the previous literature that has dealt the drying of high moisture content products by using the solar parabolic dish concentrators (SPDC). in the drying most products (fruit and vegetables) need temperatures between 40 and 60 ° C to preserve their food quality.
Dear Julian,
Can you please send me the article by mail.
Thanks and Regards,
Be mindful of CSP for cooking and drying since the operating temperature need to be carefully considered. High moisture content fruits and vegetables under high temperatures will be affected. The key here might not be high temperature but time of drying. Drying longer will give better results than considering high temperature. The insulation must be efficient.
http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-2292.pdf
Samba.
In Kashmir valley, the maximum temperature during summer, is limited typically to 85-90 degree F. Vegetables like Brinjal (egg plant), Lauki, Cauliflower, Tomato etc. are dried in open. The key factor is that the temperature should not be too high. The dried vegetables are virtually bone dry, can be stored for many months, and used in winter. So any process of drying such commodities can be done at a faster rate, ensuring good quality.
I do agree with Samba Sowe. for fruits and vegetables, you might want to consider the high temperature. Drying longer at low temperature is suitable for vegetables and fruits. 200 degree at focal point might be too extreme for crops. You could consider same principle used in CSP-cooking pots with temperature of about 40-50 degrees celcius
Hello everybody who have replied to my question. Thanks a lot for sharing your ideas. I am working on an idea to utilize heat available at the focal point. It is a well known fact that it is highly impossible to dry any fruit or vegetable at the temperature available at the focal point. With the knowledge of enormous amount of heat available at the focal point, ways have to be worked out to use this energy.
All fruits and vegetables have a limit on the maximum temperature tolerated without losing their qualities.
We have to find ways to harness the energy available in a very systematic manner and create facilities to achieve the end result.
Happy researching.
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