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Abstract
Solar air heaters is a type of heat exchanger that intercepts solar radiation, converts into heat and transfers to the air medium. Solar air heaters plays a major role in many engineering low temperature thermal applications thereby reducing the extensive usage of conventional fossil fuels. The applications of solar air heaters includes space heating, process heat, drying, night cooling and ventilation applications. The prime aim of this study is to analyze the theoretical and thermal performance of indirect solar dryer. The theoretical efficiency of the solar dryer is 54%. A solar dryer has been designed and tested its performance for drying Daucuscarota subsp. Sativus(carrot). The drier is loaded fresh carrot slices. The primary moisture content of 89% is reduced to preferred moisture level of 11% in 6h using solar dryer. Whereas hot air oven and open sun drying took 7h and 8h to dehydrate the moisture of carrot to the desired level. In addition economic analysis of solar drier has also been carried out to estimate the annual savings, life cycle savings and payback duration of the system. The economic analysis shows that, the capital cost invested to develop solar drier is retrieved in 0.75 years.