Comparative Investigation on Drying Efficiency of the Solar Dryer Using Iron as the Absorber Plate Against the Stainless Steel Absorber Plate for Drying Copra

Abstract

Aim: To study and compare the drying efficiency of stainless steel with iron as the absorber plate for drying coconut.

Materials and Methods: The sample size for the groups were determined as 20 for each group, a total of 40 for the groups using a simple sample size calculator, with G power of 80% by keeping threshold 0.05, confidence interval 95% and enrollment ratio as 1. Coconut samples placed on stainless steel absorber plate are depicted as the control group, and the coconut samples placed on
iron absorber plate are the experimental group. The coconut samples were collected from the solar dryer setup after drying for
two days and the moisture content of both the groups were determined using a hot air oven with formula.

Results: The results show that the mean reduction value of moisture content for iron is 23.98%, whereas the reduction value of moisture content for stainless steel is 30.77% for coconut samples. The independent samples t-test was done which revealed that both the groups are statistically significant with p value of 0.046 for the reduction of moisture content.

Conclusion: The evaluation of the drying efficiency in terms of moisture content reduction for iron and stainless steel as the absorber plate was experimentally studied and found that the novel iron absorber plate has lower drying efficiency than stainless steel absorber plate.