Dr. Ir.Kamaruddin Abdullah, Professor, Universitas Darma Persada, Indonesia.

Speech Title: Performance of a recirculation type integrated collector drying chamber (ICDC) solar dryer

Abstract: A novel recirculation type ICDC solar dryer has been designed, constructed and tested. The solar dryer was comprised of a feed hopper, centrifugal blower, pneumatic conveyor and a transparent structure acting as drying chamber containing a receiving hopper with vortex at the top. Test with 200 kg of rough rice indicated that the drying time required to reduce the moisture content of rough rice from 27.3% wet basis (wb) to the final moisture of 14.6%wb was 8 hrs. During the test the drying temperature was kept constant at 47 ℃. The required power for the pneumatic conveyor was 578.2 W with total energy input of 354.6 MJ comprising of electric energy, LPG and solar radiation. The resulting drying efficiency was 32.6% with specific energy of 20.54 MJ/kg of water evaporated without inclution of solar energy. Another test using 124 kg with initial moisture content (m.c.) of 31%wb.of rough rice have shown that the required drying time to achieve the final moisture of 16.4% was 4.4 hrs. During the test the drying temperature was kept at 58.5 ℃, and RH of 19.6%. The drying efficiency was 29% with specific energy of 10.6 MJ/kg water evaporated excluding solar energy.