EFEK PENGGUNAAN THERMAL MASS PADA SOLAR CROP DRYER TERHADAP TEMPERATUR ALIRAN UDARA

Sari

Using solar energy is a vital importance in creating the crop dryer means that save energy and save the environment. Some problems caused by the using of solar crop dryer are heat excess which is yielded by the air collector, inexistence of energy source at night and heat fluctuation when the sun covered by clouds. A study of using a thermal mass to store the heat of the sun is an important thing to solve those problems. This study is aimed to know the effect of thermal mass addition to air flow temperature and to unfold the effect of the size of thermal mass interpose in
accordance to its ability in absorbing and releasing heat of the solar. The experiment was done by installing some parts of thermal mass at the dryer and arange the variation of the thermal mass formation interpose at 2, 4 and 6 cm. The data was taken during 24 hours/day by installing temperature sensor to measure air flow temperature that out from the collector, the temperature before the thermal mass, and the temperature after the thermal mass, and ambient temperature. This solar radiation and air flow speed data also taken from this research. Results of the experiment show the higest level of air temperature degradation that comes into the drying bed range between 10 0C – 17 0C after the thermal mass was added. The temperature fluctuation that took place in the air flow that comes into the drying bed when the radiation intensity fluctuate was sucessfully reduced and keep the air temperature above 30 0C until 09:45 PM.
Keywords: thermal mass, crop dryer, solar radiation.