Comparative analyses of experimental and simulated performance of a mixed-mode solar dryer

Abstract

Agricultural produce upon harvesting have high moisture content which makes it unsafe for storage as the moisture in the crops attracts microorganisms which result in deterioration of the products. A solar dryer was developed, simulated and tested under the weather conditions of Zaria, Nigeria. TRANSYS 16.0 software was used to simulate the collectors’ outlet air temperature. A MATLAB code was written to compute the weight losses of yam slices present in a drying chamber. The computed Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient of Efficiency values and its corresponding root means square errors between the modelled collector air temperature, and the experimental collector air temperatures confirm the validity of TRANSYS 16 model owing to the good quality of fit between the experimental and the simulated results. Similarly, the computed Nash-Sutcliffe Coefficient of Efficiency values and its corresponding root means square errors between the modelled weight loss of yam slices, and the observed weight loss of yam slices follows the same trend.