The present work presents a thermodynamic performance analysis of a solar dryer with an evacuated-tube collector. Drying experiments for apples, carrots and apricots were conducted, after a preliminary stage of the investigation which included measurements for the determination of the collector...

In this study, a numerical procedure is outlined and representative results for heat and mass transfer during convective drying of porous bodies are presented. The Luikov model was implemented and applied both on individual samples of construction materials and agricultural products, as well as...

In this paper, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are used for the performance prediction of large solar systems. The ANN method is used to predict the expected daily energy output for typical operating conditions, as well as the temperature level the storage tank can reach by the end of the...

Solid desiccant air-conditioning systems present an interesting alternative solution with regard to the conventional vapour compression systems, in the sense that they do not use any refrigerants and they present the opportunity to exploit thermal energy, and more specifically solar thermal...

Solid desiccant air-conditioning systems can take care of both the sensible and latent load of a conditioned space, as well as of the fresh air requirements, through the use of thermal energy. The development of desiccant systems, competitive to conventional cooling ones, would require the...

A control strategy for the operation of desiccant air-conditioning systems is proposed in this work. The proposed strategy consists of a basic scenario, while some alternative strategy schemes are also proposed on the basis of the approach adopted for the controlling of the humidifiers or the...

In the present work, a method is proposed for the testing and evaluation of the performance of combined solar thermal heat pump hot water systems. The method is based on the Dynamic System Testing (DST) method for solar thermal systems. The evaluation of the system performance requires the...

The purpose of this work is to present a comparison between two standardized test methods for the evaluation of the energy performance of Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) systems. The approaches investigated concern the Dynamic method (DST) and the Input–Output method (CSTG). These methods have...