Drying Of Empty Fruit Bunches (Efb) Using A Solar Drying System Of Double Pass Solar Collector With Porous Media
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Date
2011-01
Authors
Aliasak, Zalila
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
In this thesis, the design of a solar drying system of a double-pass solar collector with
porous media is presented. The system was constructed based on suggestions made by
Ooi [1] and developed to dry empty fruit bunches (EFB) to moisture content of less than
10 mf wt%. Two sets of sample were prepared for this purpose, which is the treated
sample and the untreated sample. From the results obtained, the temperature of the
absorber plate of the solar collector of up to 100oC was recorded with solar radiation
intensity of above 800Wm-2. The temperature of the first and second passes of up to
80oC and 90oC respectively can be obtained on a sunny day. The maximum temperature
of the drying chamber at 68oC was successfully recorded. Since this system was
operating on natural convection, the average collector efficiency recorded was as low as
4.91% for a sunny day and 3.80% for an overcast day. However, the system is
considered effective since it was able to dry the treated sample with high moisture
content in the same period of time as the untreated sample at 66 hours of drying. From
this study, it was observed that the drying rate for the treated sample was much higher
than the untreated sample which ranged from 8.54-12.96 kgh-1(%) and
3.54-7.27 kgh-1(%), respectively. The ash content of less than 3 mf wt% of the treated
sample was successfully achieved, while the ash content for the untreated sample was
higher than the desired ash content. This shows that the treated sample is suitable to be
used in pyrolysis process for producing bio-oil.
Description
Keywords
The design of a solar drying system of , a double-pass solar collector with porous media