Review on Solar Drying in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria, as one of the countries in the African continent has its challenges regarding to agricultural crops cultivation and its preservation methods. Traditional methods of preserving crops are commonly adopted by the local populace over solar dryer appliances. The reason for these includes being cheaper method, does not require much technical know-how, is easily learnable, the area for drying the agricultural crop produce being unlimited etc as when compared to solar dryers that needs materials to be fabricated, required little or medium knowledge of technical know-how, financial requirement for its fabrication which could range from few dollars to thousands of dollars. Solar dryer working principles, components, various classifications, and its mode of air movement and mode of heat transfer were discussed on this article. The article also reviewed some of the experimental researches on solar drying in Nigeria carried out by various scholars. The review of the published works on solar drying of various crops under different drying techniques were carefully studied. The results showed that, significant works on solar drying in Nigeria have been carried out even though its potential is greatly under-utilized due to various factors militating against it.