The energy, exergy and economic analysis of indirect type solar dryer (ITSD) was performed while drying green chilli under forced and natural convection. Fans powered by PV panels were used for forced convection setup. The collector and drying efficiencies of the forced convection dryer were found to be 63.3% and 10.4% and the same was 53.84% and 8.90% in natural convection ITSD, respectively. The specific moisture extraction rate (SMER) of green chilli in ITSD was found to be 0.6526 and 0.5603 kg/kW-h under forced and natural convection, respectively.
This paper presents a review of exergy analysis of solar thermal systems. It includes both various types of solar collectors and various applications of solar thermal systems. As solar collectors are an important technology when sustainability is considered, exergy analysis, which gives a more representative performance evaluation, is a valuable method to evaluate and compare possible configurations of these systems. It should be noted that this review is based on literature published in the last two years.
