Author(s)

Oyetunde Adeoye Adeaga^1*, Ademola Adebukola Dare², Kamilu Moradeyo Odunfa², Olayinka Soledayo Ohunakin³

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Polytechnic, Ibadan, Adeseun Ogundoyin Campus, Eruwa, Nigeria.
²Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
³Department of Mechanical Engineering, Covenant University, Otta, Nigeria.

Major goals of industrialization include but are not limited to provision of employment, establishing a platform for overall national development and improving the capital income of whoever is involved, which invariably improve the overall standard of living. A better pre-visibility study must encompass a well analyzed economic appraisal of the plan. The law of mass conservation was applied to develop computer software with a view to analyzing the major preliminary economic indexes of industrial solar drying in both developed and rapidly developing economy. The present work used the life cycle cost method to investigate the solar process economics. In the paper three major geographical locations in Nigeria (i.e. Ibadan, Kano and Port Harcourt) were selected and their respective economic appraisal was investigated. Sample simulations revealed that, at a realistic initial moisture content of 30 (% wet basis) of the agricultural produce, economic analysis of over 20 years shows that recommended solar collector area of 85.46 m², 80.71 m² and 75.96 m² supplied about 67%, 88% and 55.8% of the annual energy needed for Ibadan, Kano and Port-Harcourt respectively.

Industrialization, Platform, Pre-Visibility, Software, Economic

Adeaga, O. , Dare, A. , Odunfa, K. and Ohunakin, O. (2015) Modeling of Solar Drying Economics Using Life Cycle Savings (L.C.S) Method. Journal of Power and Energy Engineering, 3, 55-70. doi: 10.4236/jpee.2015.38006.