Modeling and Simulation of a Renewable Energy Based-Medical Herb Dryer

Abdel-Shafy A. Nafeh, Emad Ahmed Sweelem, Faten Hosny Fahmy

PV Cells Department, Electronics Research Institute, Cairo, Egypt..

DOI: 10.4236/sgre.2013.42018                

Abstract

The medical herbs should be dried directly after harvesting, otherwise, insects and fungi spoilage them. Conventional drying methods such as open sun drying and conventional fuel dryers are not suitable, since they contaminate the herbs, decrease the drying efficiency and at the same time increase the drying cost. Therefore, the recent trend is toward the harnessing the renewable energy to dry the medical herbs. This paper presents a new controlled drying system, which uses a solar collector and an electric heater to heat the drying air, and a PV-WIND hybrid system to supply the required electric energy to the dryer electric load. This paper also presents the dynamic modeling, simulation, and control of the suggested thermal system (i.e., the solar thermal system and the electrical heater). Moreover, this paper, exhibits the different results of the thermal system, to check the effectiveness of this system that fulfills the requirements of the drying operation. The system results are found to satisfy the ultimate goals of the drying operation.

Keywords

Medical Herb Dryer; Solar Thermal System; Renewable Energy; Dynamic Modeling

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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