Design and testing of solar dryer for drying kinetics of seaweed in Malaysia

Abstract

A forced convection drying system is designed and installed at the Green Energy Technology Innovation Park, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia. The main components of the system are double-pass solar collector with finned absorber, the blower, the auxiliary heater and the drying chamber. The solar drying system is tested for drying kinetics of seaweed. The initial and final moisture content of the seaweed are 94.6% (wet basis) and 10% (product basis) respectively. The drying time is about of 7 hours at average solar radiation of about 600 W/m2 and air flow rate 0.0613kg/s. A excel software is used in the analysis of raw data obtained from the drying experiment. The values of the parameters a, n and the constant k for the models are determined using a plot of curve drying models. Three different drying models are compared with experiment data at average temperature and relative humidity about 50°C and 20% respectively. The most suitable model is selected to best describe the drying behavior of seaweed. The values of the coefficient of determination (R2), mean bias error (MBE) and root mean square error (RMSE) are used to determine the goodness or the quality of the fit. The Page model is showed a better fit to drying seaweed among Newton model and Henderson and Pabis model.