Al-Qadisiyah Journal for Engineering Sciences

Effects of roof angle, inlet gap size and drying time on dryer mass flow rate and moisture content in a chimney-dependent solar crop dryer using design of experiment (DOE)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Anthony Agyei-Agyemang 1
Peter Oppong Tawiah 1
John Kwasi Afriyie 2
Michael Kweku Commeh 3

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Kumasi, Ghana.

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kumasi Technical University, Kumasi, +233, Ghana.

3 Technology Consultancy Centre, College of Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, +233, Ghana.

https://doi.org/10.30772/qjes.v15i1.802
Abstract
A chimney dependent solar crop dryer (CDSCD) was designed and developed. Design of Experiments (DOE) was used to carry out experiments using a statistical three level non randomized factorial experimental design in Minitab statistical software version 19.0. The effect of three drying parameters, roof angle (º), Inlet gap size (mm), and time (h) on dryer inlet mass flow rate (kg/s) and moisture content (%) were studied. The regression results showed that there was a satisfactory fit of the model variability for both dryer inlet mass flow rate and crop moisture content. The p-value for each parameter was less than 0.005, which is statistically significant. The R-squared (R2) value was 94.67% for inlet air mass flow rate study and 99.72% for moisture content. It was observed that the optimal values for achieving a low moisture content response (≤ 24%) were roof angle of 81º, inlet to outlet cross-sectional area ratio of 1.08768:1 and a minimum drying time of 24 hours while the optimal values for achieving high inlet air mass flow rate (≥ 0.357 kg/s) were roof angle of 51º, inlet to outlet cross-sectional area ratio of 1.08768:1 and a minimum drying time of 5 hours. The findings could be implemented and utilized for achieving optimum ventilation and drying performances to refine dryer (CDSCD) design.

Keywords

Solar dryer
Roof angle
Inlet gap size
Multilevel factorial design
Moisture content
Ghan
Al-Qadisiyah Journal for Engineering Sciences
Volume 15, Issue 1
Winter 2022
Pages 1-8

  • Receive Date 09 October 2021
  • Revise Date 06 December 2021
  • Accept Date 15 January 2022

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