Analyzing environmental parameters for drying of neem and moringa leaves in solar greenhouse dryer regions of southern India

Abstract

The green foliage of plants plays a vital role in the Traditional Medical System(TMS). Especially neem and moringa contains rich nutrients and hence used for medicinal purpose, preserving and drying of these leaves are found to be most important. Using a solar greenhouse dryer(GHD) for this purpose reduces the cost of energy and maintains herbal's own multifarious spectrum of constituent substances.Drying of these herbals in solar greenhouse dryer depends on the duration of sunshine hours in a particular day, atmospheric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, rainfall, turbidity parameters and transmission coefficients. In the above parameters, finding the longest duration sun shine hours and the best intensity rate of the sunshine are considered to be important to get better performance from the dryer. This communication throws light on the (1) Best time to start the drying process in a particular day ,month and year in GPS co-ordinates (12.2253° N, 79.0747° E) of Tiruvannamalai, Tamilnadu (2) Fabrication of the experimental setup of solar greenhouse dryer (3) Conducting the test for reduction of moisture up to safe limit of moisture content (4) Experimental results are to be validated with the theoretical results.to control the replications of Dengue virus type-2.