The drying process is considered an effective technique for preserving foods and agricultural products from spoilage. Moreover, the drying process lessens the products' weight, volume, and packaging, which prompts a reduction in the products' transportation costs. The drying technique with solar energy represents an ancient method, still alluring due to solar energy abundance and cost‐effectiveness. In this article, the previous manuscripts concerned with studying and analyzing indirect solar dryer systems that utilize innovative solar air heaters (SAHs) are reviewed. The results and conclusions are discussed intensively to clarify the significance of utilizing this type of drying technique. The effect of many parameters on the thermal performance and efficiency of the dryer systems has been investigated. The investigated parameters included the incident solar radiation, air flow rates, outlet solar air heater temperature, absorber plate material, moisture content of the agricultural products, and the shape and configuration of the SAH. Moreover, the manuscript outlines the drying rate mathematical models that were used to validate the experimental findings. Based on the review, it is found that solar dryer systems with modified SAHs designs rather than flat plate SAH have considerable effects on enhancing thermal performance and efficiency.
By using vacuum evaporation, thin films of the (CdS)0.75-(PbS)0.25 alloy have been deposited to form a nanocrystalline composite. Investigations were made into the morphology, electrical, optical and I-V characteristics of (CdS)0.75-(PbS)0.25 films asdeposited and after annealing at various temperatures. According to AFM measurements, the values of grain sizes rise as annealing temperatures rise, showing that the films' crystallinity has been increased through heat treatment. In addition, heat treatment results in an increase in surface roughness values, suggesting rougher films that could be employed in more applications. The prepared films have direct energy band gaps, and these band gaps increase with the increase in the degrees
... Show MoreIn this work, a novel design for the NiO/TiO2 heterojunction solar cells is presented. Highly-pure nanopowders prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique were used to form the heterojunctions. The electrical characteristics of the proposed design were compared to those of a conventional thin film heterojunction design prepared by the same technique. A higher efficiency of 300% was achieved by the proposed design. This attempt can be considered as the first to fabricate solar cells from highly-pure nanopowders of two different semiconductors.
... Show MoreThe novel groups of organic chromophores containing triphenylamine (TPA) (ATP-I to ATP-IV) have been constructed by structural modification of electron donors with substitution biphenyl and bipyridine rings inserting a π-linkage. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent type of it (TD-DFT) have been operated to study results of donating ability of TPA and spacer on absorption, geometrical, photovoltaic, and energetic attributes of these sensitizers. Structural attributes have been revealed that incorporation of TPA, acceptor and π bridge include a perfect coplanar conformation in TPA-III. Based on frequency computations and ground-state optimization, bandgap (Eg) energy, ELUMO, EHOMO have been determined. For enlightening maximu
... Show MoreThe evacuated tube solar collector ETC is studied intensively and extensively by experimental and
theoretical works, in order to investigate its performance and enhancement of heat transfer, for Baghdad climate
from April 2011 till the end of March 2012. Experimental work is carried out on a well instrumented collector
consists of 16 evacuated tubes of aspect ratio 38.6 and thermally insulated tank of volume 112L. The relation
between convective heat transfer and natural circulation inside the tube is estimated, collector efficiency, effect of
tube tilt angles, incidence angle modifier, The solar heating system is investigated under different loads pattern (i.e
closed and open flow) to evaluate the heat loss coefficient
Background Solar irradiance is a nonlinear and intermittent function, which makes accurate forecasting of solar power generation a challenge. The high variability of meteorological conditions is not well represented by conventional atmospheric models, thus hampering forecasting skill and model robustness. In this work, an advanced hybridization of multi-population cuckoo search (HMPCS) algorithm with machine learning (ML) methods is developed to enhance the prediction performance of photovoltaic (PV) power forecasting with more reliability. Methods In this study, a hybrid modeling framework is proposed, called HMPCS–ML framework which captures the global search capacity of HMPCS and predictive power of sophisti
... Show MoreThis paper demonstrates the construction designing analysis and control strategies for fully tracking concentrated solar thermal by using programmable logic control in the city of Erbil-Iraq. This work used the parabolic dish as a concentrated solar thermal. At the focal point, the collected form of energy is used for heating a (water) in the receiver, analyzing this prototype in real-time with two different shapes of the receiver and comparing the results. For tracking the parabolic dish, four light-dependent resistors are used to detect the sun's position in the sky so that the tracking system follows it to make the beam radiation perpendicular to the collector surface all of the time during the day for maximum solar p
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