In a forced convection solar dryer, the dryer efficiency is continuously changing during the drying process due to\r\nchanges of solar radiation and temperature. So, it is important to use a control system to optimize energy efficiency based on\r\nchanging drying factors. For this reason, a controller was designed, simulated and evaluated. In this research, fan speed was\r\nsimulated and controlled based on changing system variables accordingly to maintain the optimized efficiency. Fan speed was\r\nsimulated by SIMULINK toolbar of MATLAB software. The dryer efficiency was determined by considering the\r\nmathematical relations and monitoring the air temperature in 3 positions: inlet and outlet of collector and outlet of drying\r\nchamber. All experiments were carried out in three replications. The current and optimized dryer efficiencies were\r\ncalculated by using the control program. Results showed that the simulated model was capable of modeling fan speed. So,\r\nstatistical analysis showed that the control system highly improved the dryer efficiency throughout its operation at probability\r\nlevel of 1%.
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