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345202

Some Engineering Factors Affecting Utilization of Solar Energy in Drying Tomato Fruits

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Environmental engineering

Abstract

Tomato fruit (TF) is considered one of the most cultivated and consumed vegetables around the world, and it is characterized by a high content of vitamins and mineral elements. Therefore, the current study focused on studying the different engineering factors through which the use of solar energy in drying TF can be maximized. The TF were dried using a solar dryer (SD) attached to a fixed solar collector and another SD attached to a solar collector integrated with an automatic sun tracking system . The field experiments were done at three drying air velocities of 1, 1.5, and 2 m/s and three slice thicknesses of 4, 6, and 8 mm. The results showed that the ASCT reaches a peak air temperature of 65°C, while the FSC reaches a peak air temperature of 55°C. This 10°C difference in air temperature can have a significant impact on drying times, which led to an increase in the thermal efficiency of the SC equipped with an ASCT by about 17% compared to the traditional FSC. The maximum efficiency of the PV system was about 17% at 8.0 a.m. In addition, the ASCT samples dry more quickly than the FSC samples at all AV. On SD merged with ASCT, the TF samples dried for 5–8 hours reached EMC; whereas, on SD merged with FSC, the TF samples dried for 6–10 hours reached EMC. This indicates that the time needed to dry TF slices was reduced by 20% to 25% when the developed ASCT was used.

DOI

10.21608/aujes.2024.252750.1202

Keywords

air velocity, open sun drying, solar drying, solar tracker, Tomato fruit

Authors

First Name

Abdallah

Last Name

Elwakeel

MiddleName

Elshawadfy

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Aswan University, Aswan 81528, Egypt

Email

abdallah_elshawadfy@agr.aswu.edu.eg

City

Aswan

Orcid

0000-0002-9360-051X

First Name

Mostafa

Last Name

Mostafa

MiddleName

B.

Affiliation

Agricultural Engineering Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Aswan University, Aswan 81528, Egypt

Email

mostafabadawy017@gmail.com

City

Luxor-Egypt

Orcid

-

First Name

Mohsen

Last Name

Gameh

MiddleName

A.

Affiliation

Soils and Water Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University, Assiut 71526, Egypt

Email

ali28@aun.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Ahmed

Last Name

Eissa

MiddleName

S.

Affiliation

Agricultural Products Process Engineering Department, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Al-Azhar University, Cairo 11751, Egypt

Email

ahmedeissa2205.el@azhar.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

5

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

46651

Issue Date

2024-03-01

Receive Date

2023-12-02

Publish Date

2024-03-01

Page Start

52

Page End

68

Print ISSN

2735-4229

Online ISSN

2735-4237

Link

https://aujes.journals.ekb.eg/article_345202.html

Detail API

https://aujes.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=345202

Order

4

Type

Original Research

Type Code

1,615

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Aswan University Journal of Environmental Studies

Publication Link

https://aujes.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Some Engineering Factors Affecting Utilization of Solar Energy in Drying Tomato Fruits

Details

Type

Article

Created At

28 Dec 2024