47. Study on Performance Evaluation of Solar cum Biomass Dryer for Turmeric Drying at Farmer Scale

Large quantity of energy is required for mechanical drying of agricultural products. For commercial scale drying petroleum fuel or electricity are used, which are scarce in rural areas. Solar and biomass energy are available in plenty in rural areas, which are utilized for drying of turmeric for small commercial scale drying. For this purpose a direct type natural convection solar dryer combined with a biomass burner was developed. The system is capable of generating an adequate and continuous flow of hot air temperature between 55–60 ^OC to enhance the drying rate. In this study, turmeric rhizomes were successfully dried in developed system. Dried turmeric rhizomes obtained under solar-cum-biomass drying by two different treatments viz., water boiling and peeling/slicing were similar in quality with respect to physical appearance like color, texture etc. The qualitative analysis showed that the traditional drying, i.e., open sun drying, dried the rhizomes in 12 days while solar-cum-biomass dryer took only 1.5 days and produced better quality products. The efficiency of the whole unit is 28.11%. Energy used for this drying was locally available. This dryer can be used by rural people for the drying of spices, agricultural products and herbs for commercial production due to low cost involved in development.