Blueprint: Village Solar Dehydrator (50 kg Batch) — Build Specification
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: DESIGN BLUEPRINT — SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED — NOT BUILT. Build specification for an indirect solar dehydrator drying a 50 kg mango batch, drawn from the source paper: William Alexander Aldred, 'A Village Solar Dehydrator for a 50 kg Mango Batch: Water Budget, Collector and Airflow Sizing, Drying Time and the Humid-Season Failure Line', DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.24109023. The blueprint specifies an 8.0 m2 flat-plate collector (two 2.0 m x 2.0 m panels), an insulated cabinet (internal 1.10 m x 1.10 m x 1.30 m) holding ten 1 m2 trays loaded at 5.0 kg of fresh fruit per tray, and a 110 m3/h fan (20.4 W against 300 Pa) supplied by a 40 W peak photovoltaic module, with dimensions, material quantities, assembly sequence, loading and operating procedure, tolerances, failure modes and maintenance. At the source paper's design point (5.5 kWh/m2/day, 30 C, 55% relative humidity) the batch loses 40.34 kg of water to 12.0% moisture (water activity 0.57) in 1.96 days. Operating envelope: the design fails below 3.10 kWh/m2/day insolation or above 81.7% ambient relative humidity at any insolation, where drying stretches past the three-day mould window; a typical humid-season day takes 3.22 days. Every performance figure is calculated from the source paper, not measured; no machine built to this blueprint has been tested.
Author: Aldred, William Alexander
Language: English
Topic: Food Drying and Modeling
Subfield: Food Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225751329
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