Determination of performance and optimum working conditions of a drying system with solar tracking mechanism

In this study, solar energy supported food drying systems with fixed and moving air solar collectors are designed. 2 units of 1400x800x100 mm air heated solar collectors (HIGK) are used in the designed drying systems. In order to benefit from the sun's rays, solar tracking feature is provided by HIGH ilene programmable control system (PLC). In order to compare the performance of the AHSC drying system with the solar tracking feature, the pear slices were dried at the same time with the fixed AHSC drying system. In both drying systems, the pear samples to be dried were made into pieces of slices with an average thickness of 10 mm. The pear slices to be dried were dried in 3 different fan cycles in both drying systems. Dry base moisture content, wet base moisture content, non-dimensional moisture content, drying rate, convective heat transfer coefficient, diffusion coefficient, activation energy values and thermal efficiency of solar collectors were calculated from drying experiment data. The drying curves of the pear product were tried to be expressed with the 13 model models in the literature and the most suitable drying model was selected for the pear product among these models. Energy and exergy analyzes of both drying systems were performed. As a result of the experiments, the drying kinetics and the performance of the drying system were investigated by using the mass loss, temperature, relative humidity values and solar radiation intensity obtained in certain periods. In drying systems with fixed and moving solar collectors, comparisons were made on product quality and drying efficiency. Predictive models have been developed using computational intelligence methods such as support vector machine, decision tree and artificial neural network for drying data obtained. Optimal working conditions for both drying systems were determined by the predicted models. It has been found that the solar tracking system has 40% more thermal efficiency than the other drying system, the average exergy efficiency is 45% more and the average drying time is 38% less.