Design and development of solar copra dryers
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Date
2007-02-08
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Dried coconut meat is known as copra. Wet meat (45 to 50% moisture content, wet basis) has to be dried to 6% moisture content for storage and for oil extraction. Drying of copra is commonly practised in open on mud or cement floor requiring about 9 days. A low cost solar dryer using black painted palmyra mat as drying floor and double layered polythelene sheet as transparent cover was found to reduce drying time to 5.5 to 6 days. The solar cabinet dryer with drying surface inclined at an angle equal to latitude, provided with reflectors from 3 sides of the dryer and also having a provision for manual suntracking was developed. The drying time required was 3.5 to 4 days at double the spreading density compared to open sundrying.
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Agric.Mech.in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Japn 1984 v-15 i-2 p59-62