07.2021.202.214

Author(s):

Van Vang Le^†, Tri Hieu Le^†,*, Thanh Phuong Nguyen^‡,*, Xuan Quang Duong^‡†

Affiliation(s):

^† Institute of Maritime, Ho Chi Minh City University of Transport, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

^‡ Institute of Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH), Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

^‡† School of Mechanical Engineering, Vietnam Maritime University, Haiphong, Vietnam

Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]; [email protected]

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The quality of agricultural products will have deteriorated as the preserved technology is inadequate and the storage process is not guaranteed. Utilizing the sun’s energy for drying is an ancient technique, however, inefficiency due to the natural intermittency of solar energy is its challenge. Besides sensible heat storage materials (SHSM), the use of latent heat storage materials (LTSM) well-known as phase change materials (PCM) is mentioned as the most efficient approach to address such problem of solar thermal devices. In comparison with SHSM, phase change materials have advantages of higher storage density, supplying almost constant temperature even after sunset which is important to sufficient drying system for the majority of agricultural products, and simultaneously have small difference heat transfer between charging and discharging heat process. This work reviews the prior studies associated with solar dryers integrated with the latent heat storage system. The different temperature between drying air and surrounding air was obtained at 19°C by application of PCM. Compared to OSD, The drying time was saved by 180% with the support of PCM. It is revealed that the heat losses of the solar dryer can be reduced by the employment of PCM, simultaneously, the efficiency of the system also is improved.