Hybrid solar dryer for manufacturing of resins

Abstract

Solar Drying Technology is used since years in different parts of the world. Depending upon the weather conditions there is variation in use of the solar dryers. For Example in countries/ regions where there are winter season throughout the year and there is no availability of sunlight solar dryers are not applicable. There are mainly two types of solar dryers i.e. Direct and Indirect type Solar dryer. In this project we designed an Indirect type Solar dryer which works in Active mode (forced circulation) for the circulation of heated air which is used for the purpose of drying of food products. The main parts of the solar dryer are collector (Area where heat is collected through solar radiations) and chamber (Area where food products to be dried are stored). The main objective of this project was to design a solar dryer using hybrid technology which can help in continuous drying even when there is no availability of sunlight and for achieving this, we used heating element which we controlled through a light sensor which helps to increase the efficiency of the drying process. The light sensor sense the brightness of the environment and operates heating element during the dark. Fans used for circulation works on a battery which stores charge from the solar panel. The temperature inside the drying chamber can be monitored on the lcd display paired with a temperature sensor which gives reading in Celsius. For the Automation of our project, we used Arduino Uno R3 which contains a microcontroller to store the program by making use of Arduino software.