Title: Assessment of exergetic sustainability indicators for a single layer solar drying system

Authors: A. Midilli; H. Kucuk

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Rize 53100, Turkey ' Faculty of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Rize 53100, Turkey

Abstract: This paper aims to develop and assess the exergetic sustainability indicators for a single layer solar drying process of the shelled and unshelled pistachio samples. For this purpose, in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the exergetic sustainability indicators such as exergetic efficiency, waste exergy ratio, exergy recoverability ratio, exergy destruction ratio, environmental impact factor and exergetic sustainability index are defined and estimated by depending on the experimental data, previously obtained from the single layer solar drying system. Accordingly, it can be said that these indicators are quite important to find out the exergetic, environmental and sustainability aspects of solar drying processes and systems. Under this important conclusion, it is observed that the increase of the waste exergy ratio decreases the exergetic efficiency and exergetic sustainability index while increasing environmental impact factor.

Keywords: single layer drying; solar drying; exergy efficiency; waste exergy ratio; environmental impact; exergetic sustainability index; shelled pistachio nuts; unshelled pistachio nuts; exergy recoverability; exergy destruction; second law; thermodynamics; solar energy; solar power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2015.068227

International Journal of Exergy, 2015 Vol.16 No.3, pp.278 - 292

Received: 29 Oct 2013
Accepted: 07 Mar 2014

Published online: 25 Mar 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article