The solar heat gain is a significant factor to be considered while designing sustainable Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning system for the working rooms in the future. By installing photovoltaics on rooftop, building can be insulated from heat and the cooling load requirement for the rooms can be reduced significantly. Advantages of building applied photovoltaic systems for building insulation are justified by means of measurements and modeling. Thermal and air quality measurements outside and inside rooms of similar area, under different types of PV arrays are observed and the phenomenon of solar heat gain is studied. The experiment was conducted in Perundurai, Tamil Nadu, India, in the months of February and March of 2019. Thermal infrared imaging data for room ceilings showed a reduction of up to 2.5°C under PV array compared to those with open roof. Computer simulations indicated significant differences in temperature, between ceilings covered by PV array and ceilings with open rooftop. The relative humidity inside the rooms covered by PV arrays is 10% higher as compared to rooms with open rooftop. Due to the installed 100 kW_e solar photovoltaic plant, emission of nearly 100 kg CO₂ is reduced per day. There is a reduction in 28.5% CO₂ inside the room with elevated PV panels at the roof top compared to room without PV panels.

Typical fuel-driven commercial dryers have excellent efficiency with homogeneous high-quality output, but they are beyond the access of farmers with limited agro land and financial resources. In this study, drying trials with potato slices were carried out utilizing a laboratory scale built drier coupled with an unique solar air heater. Assuming the set-up as mixed mode type solar dryer, performance of the dryer during the drying of potato slices was studied and the results were compared with that of open sun drying (OSD). The novel two pass solar air heater used in this project has aluminum turbulators arranged in staggered fashion. The absorber plate with aluminium turbulators present inside the double pass solar air heater reached a maximum temperature of 68°C. The average efficiency of the novel solar heater was about 72%. The moisture content of potato was reduced to 18.23% in 8 hours from 82.15%. The maximum thermal efficiency of the dryer was determined as 34%.The average specific energy requirement was estimated as 1.61 kWhkg⁻¹ and the shrinkage ratio was found to be 0.2 at the end of 7 hours.

Dry sliding wear tests are performed on magnesium composites produced by uniaxial cold press technique by using pin-on-disc. Co-efficient of friction and wear rate of magnesium composites are measured under a load of 5 N and sliding velocity of 0.2 ms^-1. Porosity, Vickers’s micro hardness, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) results are presented to characterize the physical and mechanical properties of magnesium composites. Worn surfaces are inspected by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS). Three types of wear mechanisms namely abrasive, adhesive and oxidation were observed. The wear rate was found to be low for 2wt% of HAP (3.6×10^-6cm³/m) and co-efficient of friction was observed as 0.8.

Open drying is practiced for drying Capsicum frutescens in the cottage industries of India. In order to improve drying, an experimental set-up of solar rack dryer is constructed and studied different heat transfer augmentation techniques. A passive heating coil extended from the header of a water-in-glass evacuated tube coupled with parabolic trough is used to augment the heat in the collector section of the dryer. The drying rate in rack dryer is found to be 62% higher than that of open air drying of green chillies. Moreover, the drying rate in augmented rack dryer is found to be 7% higher than that of rack dryer. In addition to this, an effective design for the dryer cabinet with respect to air circulation is arrived through computational fluid dynamics analysis. Through this new design, the drying rate is improved further by 3%. Based on energy analysis, the specific energy consumption during the drying of this particular product using the augmented dryer is found to be 1.27 kWh/kg. The exergy efficiency of the drying chamber is found to be in the range of 4%-45% with an average of 16% for Capsicum frutescens.