Design, Construction and Performance of a Solar Cloths Drying System

Abstract

This paper presents the design, construction and performance evaluation of an efficient stand-alone PV- integrated solar clothes drying system for drying applications. The solar clothes drying system was constructed to reduce the reliance on unsustainable electric dryers, which are high electricity-consuming appliances resulting in the emission of large CO₂ amounts to the environment. All these developments were geared towards improving the performance and reliability of the alternative sustainable energy systems and help to reduce environmental hazards. After testing different materials for the construction and the evacuated collector tube, the result shows that copper is the best for high performance and efficiency followed by aluminum. But aluminum was used for the casing and a copper tube for the evacuated collector tube.

From the performance evaluation test of the hybrid solar clothes drying system, it was observed that The trend of the variation in temperature was a result of the weather condition the solar drying system was able to dry a pair of clothes within 3 hours during the outdoor test and about 3 hours and 45 minutes during the indoor test with a relative humidity of 30%.

The economic analysis of the solar drying system was also carried out and the payback period was calculated to be 2.87 years, which was small compared to the life of the hybrid solar drying system.