FABSOL - A New Technology for Solar Drying
Abstract
Drying materials is energy intensive and well suited to using solar energy. This paper describes some experiments with using a porous fabric material as a transpired air solar collector to provide warm, dry air to dry wood chips. It was found that collector efficiency was in the range of 70% to 80%. With a fuel price of about 6EUcents/kWh that gives a simple payback time of under 1 year in the least sunny country in Europe, Scotland.