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
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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.
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Keywords
The design of a solar drying system of , a double-pass solar collector with porous media
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