Coletor solar para pré-aquecimento do ar em sistemas de secagem estudo de caso - cura do tabaco

Abstract

In a country like Brazil, which has a high incidence of solar radiation, the use of solar energy is an alternative that has been researched and used with many advantages. This paper presents the design, construction and evaluation of the efficiency of a flat solar collector for pre-heating the air, executed with low cost materials, to be used in drying systems. The prototype of the solar collector with gravel bed was built to be made a survey of data from temperature and relative humidity, using a recording apparatus (data loggers), and carried out the calculations for determining the useful heat provided by the collector. Since in the state of Rio Grande do Sul there are approximately 85,560 farms growing tobacco, accounting to around 91,420 curing barns, for which the widest energy source is firewood, as a case study was proposed to use this solar collector to be used as a supplementary source of heat to the existing curing barns. A case study was conducted on the curing process, verifying the wood consumption needed for each phase of the process in order to determine its energy demands. It was observed that the application of a 3sqm surface collector represented a reduction of around 5.2% in firewood consumption, which demonstrated the economic viability of the system with a time of payback of 3.4 years.