1987 Volume 49 Issue 4 Pages 353-361
The method was described to evaluate the economic efficiency of a solar drying system and the trial calculation example was shown. In the case that a solar drying system is newly introduced, the capital recovery method was selected from a viewpoint of the recovery of the facility investment. The economic efficiencies were evaluated with this method for both systems, that is, the system of an existing dryer equipped with a solar collector which uses kerosene as a supplementary heat source and the system of grain drying facility utilizing only solar energy as a heat source.
The energy cost comparative method was proposed to be available to examine the economic efficiency of the solar drying system without any supplementary heating equipment, because its heat source is quite different from a conventional heated-air dryer. An example was presented to show the concrete procedure of calculation.
