Construção de um secador do tipo estufa com exposição direta ao sol para secagem de plantas medicinais

Abstract

It is known that medicinal plants play an extremely important role within medicine, whether in Brazil or around the world, also having a lower acquisition cost. Among the various relevances that the topic presents, it is understood that the high level of Water causes this plant to have poor post-harvest conservation, as water is the most important agent in metabolic activity, which can harm this product during storage, thus arising the importance of drying. Drying medicinal plants allows them to be preserved for a long period. Before reaching the use of medicinal plants, several steps are necessary. Care begins with planting and goes through harvesting and drying, before being used medicinally. Having seen these aspects, the present work aims to build and evaluate a greenhouse-type dryer with direct exposure to the sun for drying medicinal plants, thus based on the search to make agriculture practiced on small properties and/or rural settlements more viable and sustainable, aiming for low-cost technological solutions capable of being applied in their enterprises and that can add value and make the process more profitable. This is qualitative research, being a case study, with the scope of the technical article. The work presented presents a prototype of a greenhouse-type dryer based on heating provided by solar energy. The results present the affirmation of the benefits of the construction of solar greenhouse dryers, concluding its efficiency based on the initial needs of such.