Design of a Solar Fluidized Bed Dryer and The Effect of Solar Radiation on Drying Performance

The main objective of this study was to design a solar fluidized bed dryer for agricultural products, and to investigate its performance with regard to solar radiation rate. The agricultural products were dried using solar radiation instead of fossil fuels, with highest quality and at very short time; this is due to high heat transfer rate of this dryer. The agricultural materials used for drying were corn kernels, where mean corn size, bed porosity; bulk and net density were obtained experimentally. On the basis of initial and secondary moisture content of the corn kernels, three flat plate solar collectors of 5.4 m2 with 1.66 kW of thermal power and a spiral air blower with 0.146 m3/s were used. Drying experiments were carried out in a bed height of 1 cm and air velocity of 3.5 m/s using two types of distributer screens, of 2 and 4 mm mesh size, at before noon, noon and after noon, in order to obtain the dryer performance. Results showed that the drying kinetics of corn kernels is affected by using various distributer screen mesh at different experimental time.