Gooday David and Rex Dont know whether this is relevant, but the J C Grainger prune farm at Young (New South Wales) had a commercial size solar drying setup. A friend of mine was the on site construction engineer who developed the design of the solar collector panels and put the whole thing into operation. He worked for the Australian National University in Canberra - Energy research division - but I have to say that having observed their progress for 15 years or so I firmly believe it was deliberately intended that none of this ever became a commercial reality!! The Grainger installation worked by the use of a system of interconnected curved collector panels covered with glass mirrors that focussed sunlight to heat a water pipe system - hot water was accumulated and stored in a large tank (2000gal+) and this was used via a heat exchanger system to replace the propane heat source in the drying tunnel. Using hot water allowed energy storage and longer running times.It worked well when first installed - a major benefit is that the burnt gases are no longer there to contaminate the fruit. I can post more on this if youre interested, my friend has gone to the happy hunting ground but I still have some of the leftover bits in my yard LCharles
> > >Any thoughts or pointers? We have the sunshine and I'm keen to add > >value by dehydrating a portion of our produce. > > > >Thanks... Rex > But I don't know of anyone actually doing > this on a large production scale. David Robison
