"Development of an Improved Smart Solar Post-harvest Dryer "

Abstract

The most potent way to address the issue of food scarcity as the global population rises is the reduction of food losses. Drying is a major channel of achieving safety and security of food items. In this study, an improved smart solar dryer was developed and its performance was evaluated. 200g of fresh corn and 400g of ripe plantain were used to investigate the performance of the developed dryer. Both products were weighed and placed in the dryer and open sun drying for some days. Moreover, weight losses of the products in the dryer and open sun as well as various temperatures were measured. The results showed that the ambient temperature during the experiments was lower than the temperature of the drying chamber. In this experiment with 200g of fresh corn and 400g of unripe plantain, an overall moisture content of 78% w.b and 76.2% w.b were removed from fresh corn and ripe plantain in the dryer within 7 days. However, 72.4% w.b. and 70.4% w.b. moisture content were removed from fresh corn and ripe plantain placed in open sun drying for 10 days. The efficiency of sun drying was 49.54% for ripe plantain and 25.48% for fresh corn whilst the dryer was 27.45% and 53.67% for fresh corn and ripe plantain respectively. The developed smart solar dryer is economically viable and preferred to be replicated among local farmers in Nigeria so as to protect the environment and saves cost and time spent on open sun drying of farm produce.