Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The objective of this study is to promote the production for small scale drying industries by reducing the drying time of agricultural products. Discrete mirrors are arranged in a parabolic fashion and used as reflectors to concentrate the incoming solar radiation. The available solar flux is doubled by using this discrete arrangement of mirrors. Optical simulations are performed using Monte Carlo Ray tracing algorithm and various effects were studied to select the best arrangement of mirrors. The concentrated type dryer has been numerically simulated and no-load testing is performed using ANSYS Fluent. Simulation is carried out for various inlet velocities from 0.1 to 1 m s−1. The concentrated setup operates between 0.4 and 1 m s−1 of velocity to obtain temperature in the range of 40–70 °C. The maximum and minimum increase in outlet temperature is 23.52% and 2.87%, and the Nusselt number enhancement is 18.94% and 4.15%, respectively.
Ahmed et al. (Tue,) studied this question.