The dehydrating temperature for most of the agricultural and food products range between 55˚C -65˚C. This work deals with the experimental investigation of a direct type, natural convection solar box dryer typically working between the temperature ranges of 40˚C -80˚C. The dryer was designed and fabricated to work at a latitude of 10.7560˚N and longitude of 78.6513˚E. The dryer consists of a stainless steel Flat plate collector -FPC (Area -0.3 m²) placed at an angle of 20.7905˚N. Evenly sliced pieces of pineapple were used as sample to investigate the drying performance on the basis of certain specific drying parameters such as: % reduction in moisture, amount of evaporated water, mass shrinkage ratio and drying rate of the sample. The results were compared with a simultaneous Open Sun Drying (OSD) as well as Electric Oven Drying (OTG oven at 80˚C). Practical Examinations of the dryer revealed that, pineapple which was initially at a mass of 100 g was reduced to a mass of 16.1 g after 7 hours of drying by the developed setup, removing 83.9 % of moisture content from the sample in % -wet basis. Whereas in case of OSD and Oven Drying 83.9 % and 84.1 % of moisture content was removed from the sample in a time span of 12 hours and 7 hours respectively. It has been practically observed that the absorber plate reaches an average temperature of 79.5˚C during the peak working hour when the solar Irradiance value reaches a peak value of 1128 W/m².
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