Proposal Solar Drying With Heat Storage Applied to Medicinal Plants

In this work, a proposal of an indirect solar dryer with a vacuum solar collector and storage of water-sensitive heater is presented. A mathematical model is presented as the first approximation to evaluate the performance. The test climatic conditions are based on the city of Cascavel (Paraná, Brazil) and the resolution of the model was aided by the EES program. In order to analyze the performance of the system, a model load was created based on the references found in the literature, sample of 80 kg with initial water content of 75% w.b and final of 10% w.b, for drying time of 4 h and 3 h with air velocity of 0.7 m/s and 1.1 m/s respectively. It was possible to simulate the variation of the temperature of the reservoir during the day, as well as the response of the heat exchanger to the variation of temperature of entrance of the fluids and the climatic influence, radiation and ambient temperature in the participation of the solar energy in the total energy consumption of the drying. The simulations suggest good results with solar fraction between 20 and 47 %, meanwhile in the literature the values reported are between 10 and 25%.