Design and Development of an Automated Solar-Biomass Hybrid Rubber Sheet Drying System

Abstract

Rubber Industry is a prominent industry all over the world since natural rubber can be made to use in a number of ways. Thus it is a major form of economy in regions suitable for natural rubber plantation like India, Thailand etc. The rubber latex is coagulated using an acid solution and can be rolled into ribbed sheets. The conventional drying is done by burning of firewood which takes approximately 4 days to get the dried sheet. An effort to modify this method of drying is suggested here. In the proposed design, the continuous sheets after rolling are made to form a set of hanging loops inside a heating chamber. Here both surfaces of the sheets are equally exposed to hot air introduced at 70 degree Celsius. The hot air is generated using a solar biomass hybrid system. In a solar biomass hybrid system the energy required for drying the sheets is obtained from burning of biomass along with solar energy stored in a thermal storage. Thus this system can be a solution for the long time duration taken for drying using the conventional methods. This system improves the quality of rubber sheets and also reduces man power requirement.