Design and Development of Clothes Drying Closet Using Solar Energy

• Main Author: Mohd Norzahidi Bin Md Yusof, Mohd Norzahidi
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2008
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/830/1/BODY.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/830/

Nowadays, a lot of home appliances use electricity as the source of energy to operate. As we know it, the common cloth dryers consume a lot of electricity to provide heat during drying process. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to design and develop a cloth drying closet using solar energy as a source of heat. This project covers the study of an air solar collector and the distribution of the heat induced from the solar energy into a closet where the heat is used to dry wet clothes. The project was initiated with the problem identification and study of the solar energy applications at home. From the problem identification, some related quantification sorted out to determine the requirements for the design. The design stage comprise of many items such as the air solar collector, ducts, closet, system configuration, and energy analysis. The design of the solar collector is important since it produces the heat that would be continuously fed into the drying closet. The calculation part covers the amount of heat produce by the solar collector, heat loss in the ducts and the time taken for the clothes to be completely dry. Then the project proceeds to the detail design work that result in the device drawings from CATIA or AutoCAD. As a result, all the main components in this project have been identified and the engineering design specifications are provided in this report. The fabrication work and the assembly of the prototype are done during the second part of this project. The finalization of the project will involved the testing and analysis of the prototype. The solar drying closet system consists of the air solar collector, flexible duct, exhaust fan and a closet. It can be integrated with the available closet at home but need certain modification.