Investigation of tha effect of solar powered vacuum tube dryer capacity change on performance

The importance of energy and food has once again come to the fore with the Russia-Ukraine war in the last five months. When the shipment of Russian natural gas and grains to Europe stopped, the economy giants became desperate and went on a quest. This once again showed us the importance of being independent in energy. World states are turning to environmentalist energy policy. Solar energy is the biggest renewable energy potential in our country. In recent years, a lot of research has been done on solar energy. Food, as well as energy, plays an important role in country policies. Dry foods are preferred because of their long shelf life, ease of storage and accessibility at all times. In this study, a vacuum tube solar drying oven design, which is environmentally friendly, takes its energy from the sun and can dry many foods, has been made. The drying parameters were analyzed experimentally by changing the number of vacuum tubes in the furnace, which was designed and manufactured. The ash weight of the mushroom dried in the oven was found to be 3.7 water/g dry matter. When the mushroom dried by taking 50 g into the drying oven was weighed after eight hours, 4.9 water/g dry matter was obtained. The drying air temperature varied in the range of 28.9-70.5 °C, depending on the weather during the day. The data of the experiment, which started with eight vacuum tubes, were taken by reducing one tube every day. The half-hour averages of the data were graphed and interpreted. From eight vacuum tubes to four vacuum tubes, there was no change in cabin temperature. After four cabin tubes, cabin temperature decreased depending on the number of tubes. Radiation and drying air temperature showed parallelism. As the radiation increased, the drying air temperature increased and the product weight decreased. As a result of the drying processes, the mushroom was dried up to 4.9 water/g dry matter. This shows us that, as a result of our experiment, we approached 90.2% of the full dry weight. The obtained data supports that the designed system is efficient. When the efficiency calculation of the system was made, an efficiency of 66% was reached with four vacuum tubes. These obtained data support the designed system.