DEVELOPING A MODEL FOR DESIGNING SOLAR COLLECTOR BASED ON NASARAWA SOLAR DATA

Abstract

Efforts to maximize the utilization of the huge solar radiation in Nasarawa cannot be a wasted effort. Again, looking at the lean efficiencies of a good number of the produced solar dryers in Nasarawa paved way for more improvement of this subject area. Also, research gathered that majority of the solar appliances used in Nasarawa were not designed based on the solar data of the town. This paper looked into coming up with a model to design and construct solar dryer based on solar radiation data of Nasarawa. The Nasarawa solar data used here were obtained from previous work carried out on direct capturing of Nasarawa hourly solar radiation which lasted for 356 days. The developed model to determine the area of solar collector is . The area of the solar collector in drying per boiled rice and sliced mangoes using solar dryer were carried out.  From the analyses, the values of the solar collector for Kano - Nigeria, Nasarawa – Nigeria and Zalingei – Sudan are 3.1432 m², 2.5689 m² and 1.6971 m² respectively. This can further be used to determine other parameters needed for further design parameters dimensions. Efforts were made to use the derived equations to determine the size of solar collector of other areas who’s their solar data were available and it was quite in agreement.