Assessment of exergetic sustainability indicators for a single layer solar drying system

Abstract

This paper aims to develop and assess the exergetic sustainability indicators for a single layer solar drying process of the shelled and unshelled pistachio samples. For this purpose, in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the exergetic sustainability indicators such as exergetic efficiency, waste exergy ratio, exergy recoverability ratio, exergy destruction ratio, environmental impact factor and exergetic sustainability index are defined and estimated by depending on the experimental data, previously obtained from the single layer solar drying system. Accordingly, it can be said that these indicators are quite important to find out the exergetic, environmental and sustainability aspects of solar drying processes and systems. Under this important conclusion, it is observed that the increase of the waste exergy ratio decreases the exergetic efficiency and exergetic sustainability index while increasing environmental impact factor.