Performance of indirect through pass natural convective solar crop dryer with phase change thermal energy storage

A state-of-the-art solar crop dryer was developed with thermal energy storage to maintain continuity of drying of herbs for their colour and flavour vulnerability. The dryer consists of flat plate solar collector, packed bed phase change energy storage, drying plenum with crop trays and natural ventilation system. Dryer is designed with a maximum collector area of 1.5 m2, six crop trays with an effective area of 0.50 × 0.75 m2, can hold 12 kg of fresh leafy herbs. The dryer is attached with a packed bed thermal energy storage having capacity of 50 kg phase change material (PCM). The drying system works in such a manner that phase change material stores the thermal energy during sun shine hours and releases the latent and sensible heat after sunset, thus dryer is effectively operative for next 5–6 h. The temperature in drying chamber was observed 6 °C higher than the ambient temperature after sunshine hours till the mid night during the month of June at Jodhpur. Economic performance of the dryer was analysed with return on capital and simple payback period as 0.65 and 1.57 year respectively on optimum cost of raw material and product sale price.