Development of Solar Tunnel Dryer for Cassava chip

Abstract

Development of solar tunnel dryer for cassava chip is inspired by researcher who foresaw the problem of conventional method cassava drying and intend to solve challenges occurred along the process. The project can solve various problems such as dust pollution from drying, interfering weather conditions, and so on. Moreover, the solar tunnel dryer can increase the drying efficiency better than conventional method, It can reduce the drying time around 5 hours or 30% of the total drying time compared to the previous method, and can also make the air temperature inside the solar tunnel dryer as high as 58.8 ° C or 54.33 % of the air temperature used in conventional method. Flat shape of cassava chip at thickness 4 cm was reduce the moisture content to 20.06 % wb in 21 hr and payback period of the solar drying tunnel is 0.9 years.