Ashiwani Kumar

The design and fabrication of manually operated pesticide sprayer. Sprayer consists of back pack sprayer which is mounted on the tank base of the trolley. The piston rod of the tank is connected to the crank, which is mounted on the smaller gear, which in turn is meshed with a larger gear; the larger gear is mounted on the trolley. The pump is connected to the pressure tank, which pressurizes the fluid during operation and stores in the pressure tank. Using a flexible hose, the pressurized pesticide is transferred to the multiple nozzles. According to the need the valve is operated so as to obtain a fine spray throughout. By using manually operated pesticide sprayer, the strain, which is caused to the farmers in conventional backpack sprayer, is reduced and larger area can be covered in a short time.

Solar drying is one of the most ancient and simplest forms of drying known to mankind. Even today, most of the agricultural product such as grains, spices, fruits and vegetables are dried under the sun. However, drying these products directly under the open sun has many drawbacks such as debris, rain, blowing wind, insect interaction, human and animal interference etc. which leads to contamination of the products. Thus, there is a need to make the solar dryers more efficient and cheaper. There are various types of solar dryers developed and are classified based on the mode of air circulation, such as, natural circulation and forced circulation solar dryers; based on the type of drying, like, direct solar drying, indirect solar drying and mixed mode solar drying; material to be dried; types of operation e.g., batch or continuous, etc. In this book, we did a comprehensive review of various new technologies in indirect type solar dryers. We analyzed how these dryers fare against open sun drying and against each other and also, all the different techniques applied to them, in order to improve their efficiency, performance and reduce the drying times.