Solar-based Pepper-berries Dryer

Researchers: Assoc Prof Dr Ir Andrew Ragai Henry Rigit, Ervina Junaidi, Dr Rubiyah Baini, Almon Chai Wei-Yen

This research project is on the design and development of a solar-based dryer for drying pepper-berries. The project can be divided into two stages: design and development.

In the first stage, critical parameters such as the properties, characteristics, and the drying curve of the pepper-berries will be determined to aid in the design of the dryer. A computational fluid-dynamics solver will then be utilised to perform computational simulation of the dryer.

The computational solver can perform the simulations to obtain visual presentation of the operations within the solar based dryer such as the air flow patterns and heat transfer. These will decide whether the dryer design is workable.

In the second stage, development and fabrication will be carried out based on the established parameters for the dryer design. This will optimise the function of the constructed solar-based pepper-berries dryer.

This constructed dryer will then be applied in the sub-rural and rural plantations or farms to assist the farmers in processing their harvested pepper berries.