The goal of the project is to develop and create ecology pure technology and corresponding installations for receiving powders from agricultural products with the use of solar energy, simultaneous decision of foodstuffs, energetic problems and environmental protection problems.
Introduction and review
Since gaining sovereignty Kyrgyzstan like other post-soviet states, is faced with numerous problems which have appeared in a variety of areas: politics, economy, social sphere, including issues related to food, energy and environmental security.
Every year in the Central Asian region is grown several million tons of vegetables, fruits and melons. This region is one of the largest places of agricultural products production in the world.
About 30 -35 % grown production consuming in the Central Asian countries themselves, and the rest either fresh or in processed form are exported to neighboring countries. Only the smallest part of products is exported to the farthest countries.
Due to imperfect storage technologies and weak development of processing industry a significant part of the harvest is lost. In addition, the remoteness of the region from the major regions- the consumers and absence of a developed transportation system makes it difficult to issue sales.
Until now, the main type of processing of agricultural products in the Central Asian region remains canning and drying.
Currently applied in Central Asia drying techniques – folks, used for thousands of years: dried product is dried in the open air, and under the sun or in the shad. During drying, they are polluted with dust and spoil sediments, these properties spoils the appearance and reduces consumer qualities.
One way to reduce crop losses, preserving its consumer qualities, long-term storage and easy transportation could be turning them into powder at the place of their production.
Existing technologies in the world agricultural production of powders is based on the dried past like agricultural products using the thermal energy of hot air: through a thin film past like product is blown with a hot air .
To heat the coolant – air are used water or electric heaters.
For drying 1 kg of agricultural products with initial moisture content of about 90% (most agricultural product’s humidity) until residual moisture of 5-8%, at which they can be converted into a powder, it requires an average of about 2300 Кj of energy.
For drying a few hundred thousand tons of production will require billions of kilojoules of energy. To obtain such an amount of energy required to burn the hundreds of thousands of tons of hydrocarbon fuel. This in turn leads to environmental pollution by harmful products of combustion of solid or gaseous fuels, among which- a greenhouse gas СО2.
Often the conditions of the Central Asia are being cut down for fuel and scarce shrub and tree species in the foothill areas, which increases the risk of landslides and mud flows.
The uses of solar energy for drying agricultural products, to some extend help to reduce the extension of such deforestation.
Preparation of powders from agricultural products by using solar energy to achieve large savings in fuel recourses currently used as the fossil fuel (liquid, solid, gaseous) or electrical energy. Given the number of the worlds agricultural product’s powders necessary for this thermal energy can be said that for the use of the developed solar technology will give savings of 2-2,2 billion euro a year.
In addition, it expected a substantial reduction of millions of tons of СО2 into the atmosphere.
Substitution of electro energy with solar power will give a large savings of electro energy. Exempt electricity can be used for other, more high tech processes.
Technology development of agricultural powders using solar energy will help to prevent loss occurring of grown products.
Currently does not exist technology of agricultural production of powders by using solar energy. Such technology is needed in all regions of the world where agricultural products are grown in large quantities, especially for Central Asian region with high solar energy recourses. The number of days with sunshine in Central Asian meals reaches 250-280, and the density of the integrated solar radiation in the sun – during ripening of the main types of fruit and vegetables up to 900 W/м2 and more.
Central Asian region due to economic distress is not able to build the industrial drying plants without investments of developed countries. In addition the limited energy recourse do not allow to exploit powerful meals. Importing increases the cost of energy production costs.
In Central Asia there is a more long or less powerful plant and equipment for the production of agricultural products powders, although raw materials are available in sufficient quantities.
Therefore, the development of industrial technology for production of agricultural products with the help of solar energy is of great economic importance to the countries of central Asian region.
Technology and installation can also be used in all regions of the earth where there is sufficient solar energy recourse – from the middle latitudes of the northern to southern countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, Australia and etc.
The project will make it possible to simultaneously solve several problems: food, energy and environment.
Certain number of agricultural products will keep from the decay and loss.
Multimillion dollar profit will be given. It allows you to create new jobs as in factories for the production of powders as agricultural enterprises manufactory equipment for solar drying.
For the development of both experienced and industrial technologies of powders using solar energy is needed to solve a number of scientific technological and development objectives:
- theoretically and experimentally investigate thermal processes in the environment liquid product when dried;
- it is necessary to obtain reliable date on the thermal properties of the food and melons, consumption and transportation to be in dried or powdered form of cultivated in Central Asia which are needed in the calculation process of drying products.
- for optimization of drying process necessary math modeling of process heat mass exchange with crushed products in solar drying installations in removing the moisture from products, including dependence on parameters of drying installation itself;
- necessary experimentally investigate drying of liquid viscous and dispersed food products;
- need to work out technology of powder receiving from products, containing much sugar (melon, cherry, apricot ), which after drying stay soft (flexible) and immediately after solar drying is impossible transfer them into powder .
Developing technology must provide saving of nutritious properties receiving powders. Necessary to investigate standard indexes of quality receiving in developed technology of powder from agricultural products and provide them correspondence with adopted standards.
Proceeding from results of theoretical investigations on math models necessary to elaborate construction of solar drying installation for drying liquid viscous agricultural products, and according to results of experiments optimize its geometric and other parameters.
Its necessary to research techno-economic features of developed solar drying installation: cost, economical effect, terms of payback and their tendencies of changing dependence from changing prizes on thermal carriers and materials.
