Authors : Driss Slimani, Bachir Elkihel and Christelle Perilhon
Abstract: In this experimental study, a solar dryer has been designed and manufactured by combining a concave solar concentrator with a series of convergent lenses whose concentrated radiation are reflected to the same absorber. Our main goal for this technique is to reduce the absorber thermal losses without the need to provide expensive and fragile thermal insulation. Thus, the idea is to create the greenhouse heating on both sides of the flat absorber. In our dryer, the receiver uses air and water as the heat transfer fluid these two fluids are heated in the absorber and sent a heat exchanger. Furthermore, in order to improve the thermal performance, our approach is based on some techniques such as the combination of two types of solar concentrators, simultaneous use of two natural heat transfer fluids, tilting concentrators, the insertion of obstacles at the absorber and a specific solar tracker for explosive atmosphere. Our dryer has been tested for the first time in gas filling plant in Morocco for drying painted gas bottles. Compared with flat-plate solar collector, the proposed dryer has improved the drying temperature from 40-85°C. In fact, our solar dryer has reduced the drying time from 420 to just 40 sec. Also, the health risks of workers have been reduced and the number of painted bottles has been increased by more than 43%.
Driss Slimani, Bachir Elkihel and Christelle Perilhon, 2019. Experimental Study of a New Technique to Reduce Absorber Heat Losses: Applied for Drying Painted Gas Cylinders. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 14: 5725-5732.