Abstract:
A domestic solar dryer for agricultural applications has been successfully designed, constructed, and characterized. The dryer is an integral or direct mode type made from locally available material such as plywood, Perspex® glass, angle iron, paints, and wire-mesh. The dimensions of the dryer is 100cm x 50cm x 84cm / 72cm (length width x height). The optimum temperature of the dryer is 67.00c with a corresponding ambient temperature of 31.00c. The dryer was used to dry agricultural products (pepper and groundnuts). It took a maximum of five and eight days, respectively, to dry pepper and groundnuts respectively at average dryer relative humidity of 43% and average temperature of 63.0oC.The average collector efficiency is 10% while the dryer efficiency is 22%, a value above the typical values
