SOLAR-POWERED EVAPORATIVE COOLING SYSTEM

Adekanye, T. A. and Saleh, A. and Alhassan, Elijah A. and ILIYAH, A and FEJURO, E (2019) SOLAR-POWERED EVAPORATIVE COOLING SYSTEM. Nigerian Journal of Scientific Research, 19 (1). pp. 1-10. ISSN 0794-0319

Text EVALUATION OF A SOLAR-POWERED EVAPORATIVE COOLING.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (767kB)

Abstract

A solar-powered evaporative cooling system was assessed to prolong the shelf-life of farmers' fruits and vegetables in rural areas without electricity. Temperature and relative humidity for both ambient and the cooling device were recorded daily using a wet bulb and dry bulb thermometer and digital humidity - temperature meter. Weight loss was measured with a digital weighing balance. The device was evaluated in terms of change in temperature, weight loss, and relative humidity for 14 days using citrus and tomatoes in ambient condition and in the cooler. The average temperature drop and saturation efficiency in the cooler during the no-load test were 7°C and 41%, respectively. Weight losses in citrus and tomatoes in ambient condition were 20.22% and 45.56% respectively, while those stored at cooler temperature were 6.54% and 19.98% for citrus and tomatoes respectively. The cooler’s ambient temperature varied from23.0℃ to 26.0℃ and ambient relative humidity from 73.9% to 91.33%. The device is a very simple system intended to serve local farmers to increase their economic returns from their farming activities. The overall cost of this cooling device was forty nine thousand naira (N49, 000).

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