Experimental and Modeling Study of Peanut Drying in a Solar Dryer with a Novel Type of a Drying Chamber

The aim of the present study is to investigate the experimental performance of a solar dryer by using a novel type of a drying chamber for increasing the drying performance and ensuring homogeneous drying. The drying system (SDS) consisted of a new type of a drying chamber and a solar air collector, which were designed, made, and tested in Osmaniye, Turkey. The analyses of Computational Fluid Dynamics were carried out to demonstrate the advantage of the designed drying chamber over the tunnel type drying chamber, which is commonly used in peanut drying. The drying experiments were conducted using in-shell peanut to observe the performance of the system. The drying procedure was performed in the form of open sun drying (OSD), and the results of drying kinetics such as moisture ratio (MR), drying rate (DR), and heat transfer coefficient (h(c)) obtained from both drying methods were compared. The MR and DR values obtained during the drying experiments were estimated using different models such as mathematical, multiple linear regression (MLR), decision tree (DT), and the support vector machine (SVM). It was observed from the numerical results that the products can dry more homogenously and effectively with the newly designed drying chamber compared to the conventional tunnel type drying chamber. The results of the drying experiments showed that the products dried earlier and more regularly through the SDS compared to the OSD. The DR and h(c) values were found 0.0051E-01 (g(w)/g(dm))/min and 1.5727 W/m(2)degrees C for SDS and 0.0039E-01 (g(w)/g(dm))/min and 1.4664 W/m(2)degrees C for OSD, respectively. The models that best estimated the experimentally obtained MR and DR values for peanuts dried with the SDS proved to be the Random Tree Model (R-2 = 0.9972) and Quintic Model (R-2 = 0.8551), respectively.