The Institute of Apicultural Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IARCAAS) recently studied bee pollen, a type of featured agricultural products, by the multiple sensing technique through the multiparameter online monitoring and real-time feedback system. As a result, it developed a set of vacuum tube hybrid solar-electric smart drying equipment, which could switch different drying modes automatically according to various weather and light intensities, in order to realize all-weather adaptive self-regulation for hybrid solar drying. Relevant findings were published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, a top international energy journal (CAS Zone 1 top journal, IF="16.799)." Peng Wenjun, a research fellow of IARCAAS, and Fang Xiaoming, an associate research fellow of IARCAAS, are joint corresponding authors of the study, and IARCAAS is the first unit of the paper.

Since the proposal of goals of “carbon peaking” and “carbon neutrality”, how to reduce energy consumption during agricultural product processing has drawn increasing attention from the public. The development and application of hybrid solar drying equipment is expected to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the drying process, and will play an important role in green, low-carbon and sustainable development.

The study analyzed the drying effect, thermodynamic performance, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and economic efficiency of the equipment during processing systematically. The findings showed that the hybrid drying equipment had a good thermodynamic performance, and could effectively reduce the drying time of featured agricultural products and the greenhouse gas emissions, and improve the energy efficiency. Besides, the equipment provided a new technological approach for the new energy utilization in the primary processing of agricultural products and the green and intelligent manufacturing of drying equipment, thus could be widely used in the primary processing of agricultural products.