Pitch
Saving fossil fuel,agricultural produce and energy by utilizing molten salt solar agriculture crops dryer.
Description
Summary
Due to lack of cold storage facilities and packed food processing facilities in developing countries most of the vegetables and other crops get rotten within week of harvest. By drying the vegetables and crops they can be preserved for longer periods and the supply of vegetables and crops can be extended up to six month or longer.
This is an idea to improve conventional solar dryer efficiency by utilizing thermal storage capacity of Molten Salt so that drying of agriculture crops can take place at night and drying time gets reduced by 50 percent.
What actions do you propose?
Who will take these actions?
1. MNRE India
2. State government to provide land for crop and vegetables drying at village levels.
3. Government & Private companies involved in solar thermal plant equipment manufacturing.
4. IIT (Indian Institute of technology) for R&D and cost viability study.
Where will these actions be taken?
The Location will be India. if the savings are good it can be implemented in country where solar irradiance is good.
How much will emissions be reduced or sequestered vs. business as usual levels?
A typical cold storage plant of 10 (TR )needs 5880 Kg of HSD (High speed Diesel/ year. so we can estimate huge amount of HSD saving if the potato or other crops are converted into chips and dried and stored.
it will require energy for drying only. when the potato or other crops are dried they can be stored at normal temperature in suitable packing.
What are other key benefits?
1. Agriculture produce waste will be reduced.
2. Supply side of agriculture produce of vegetables fruits and other produce will increase and price of vegetables and other produce will get reduced.
3.Fuel oil and electrical energy will be saved, it can be operated in area which are not connected to grid.
4.More employment in rural area will be generated as operation of loading the dryer is manual.
What are the proposal’s costs?
Cost estimate is around 3 to 6 $ USD per watt.
The system is new technology so O&M cost could go higher.
Time line
The proposed action will be to develop the system of 1000Kg dryer and evaluating it with conventional dryer. The study will take 3 years to complete.
Related proposals
References
The article is for reference to the amount of food wasted due to lack of cold storage in India. if you dry the produce properly using solar thermal technology need for cold storage get reduced.
By:
Jigisha-1-ST
