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Hassanain A.A., 2011. Drying sage (Salvia officinalis L.) in passive solar dryers. Res. Agr. Eng., Sage plants (Salvia officinalis L.) were dried in the passive dryers in different times of the year. Different passive solar dryers were used to achieve the socio-economical benefits from drying the medicinal plants growing in Sinai area. Drying sage plants might be a source to increase the Bedouin income instead of cannabis or marijuana, especially if it is exported abroad. Four drying methods were used in this investigation to dry sage in two seasons, namely August 2009 and March 2010 before flowering stage. Plants were dried in an Unglazed transpired passive solar dryer with 100% exposure to direct sun-rays, in a greenhouse dryer covered with shading cloth with 50% exposure to direct sun-rays, and with 0% sun-rays while the medicinal plants were protected from sun i.e. in shaded barn. Investigations were carried out under the environmental weather conditions of Ismailia, Egypt. The study revealed that sage can be dried at different times of the year even before the flowering stage of the plants.

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Multi steps computer program, ISWPS was designed for improving solar pumping systems under Egyptian climatic conditions. Step-7 of the Model was specialized to compute flow rate and head for photovoltaic pumping system under variable intensive solar radiation and high ambient air temperature. This study was carried out to validate the flow rate and generated head with the experimental data at the same incident solar radiation and ambient air temperature. The validation investigated under static head of 0 and 1 m for both flow rate and generated head. The experimental setup consists of a stand-alone solar module, a pumping unit comprised a motor and a centrifugal pump (DC-PV pump). The predicted flow rate and water head obtained from ISWPS were validated under the same operating conditions. Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) were used to validate the model with the experimental data (i.e. paired samples statistics, correlations and T-test for paired differences with 99% confidence interval). The study revealed that, the computation model estimated the flow rate and the water head especially under intensive solar radiation with an average deviations between measured and predicted flow rates of-3.73 % and-0.63 % at static head of 0 m and 1 m, respectively along six months from July till December. Meanwhile, the average deviations between measured and predicted head for the same period were-7.78 % and 1.53 % at static head of 0 m and 1 m, respectively.