Evaluating the effectiveness of paraffin wax and zinc sulphide nanoparticles to improve the performance of hybrid solar panel/dryer

Hybrid thermal systems offer advantages over conventional systems because of their versatility. This paper discusses a hybrid solar panel/dryer that integrates a typical solar photovoltaic panel for domestic electricity generation and a dryer tower for drying agricultural products. The active thermodynamic system uses an electric fan to transfer heated air from the solar panel to the dryer tower. The forced convective heat transfer increases the effectiveness of drying the agricultural products inside the dryer tower. The effectiveness of the hybrid solar panel/dryer is enhanced by using a heat storage medium like paraffin wax mixed with a fractional quantity of zinc sulphide nanoparticles. The forced convection solar dryer used in this study performed better in every way, including drying time, rate of moisture removal, electrical efficiency, thermal efficiency, and total thermal efficiency. Typically, solar radiation serves as a source of energy generation for the solar dryers. The solar drier was tested with 2 kg of raw peanuts. An identical quantity of raw peanuts was dried in the open air at the same time. The ambient temperature varied between 31̊C and 58 ̊C. In nine consecutive days with bright, sunny skies, the raw peanuts’ initial moisture content of 78.4% (weight basis) was decreased to 14.3% (weight basis). Over nine days, the hybrid solar panel/dryer was operated from 09:00 to 16:00. A comparison analysis was carried out to determine the improvement in the performance of the hybrid solar panel/dryer. It was observed that the heat absorption medium i.e., paraffin wax mixed with zinc sulphide nanoparticles contributed in increasing the thermal efficiency of the hybrid solar panel/dryer. The open sun drying produced inferior results compared to solar dryer drying.