Agricultural products such as coffee, tobacco, tea, fruit, cocoa beans, rice, nuts, and timber generally require drying through a consistent application of relatively low heat. Traditionally, crop drying has been accomplished by oven-burning fossil fuels or open air drying under screened sunlight. These methods, however, have their shortcomings. The former is expensive and damages the environment and the latter is susceptible to the variety and unpredictability of the weather.
The Solarwall crop drying system is a happy medium between these two methods and it dries crops with more efficiency, uniformity, and economy. This crop drying system may be combined with that of fuel burning when, such as at night or during cloudy days, the Solarwall system doesn’t function or is insufficient. In this way, Solarwall reduces the necessary amount of fossil fuel by 40%.
How Solarwall works Black metal panels, perforated by hundreds of tiny slivers, are installed 50-centimeters above the roof of a drying plant, creating a chamber between the panels and the roof. The tiny perforations in the panels allow the air warmed by solar radiation falling on the panels. A fan sucks the solar-heated air through an oven that burns traditional combustibles only at night or during cloudy days. The fan then conducts the heated air to the drying chamber, where a conveyor moves the coffee beans up and down so that the drying is even and complete.
