About BISCUIT / Building integrated solar crop dryer for food preservation in urban farming applications

BISCUIT’s approach is composed of a union of renewable energy, building engineering and urban agriculture, creating a new concept for environmentally sustainable cities.

The scope of BISCUIT is to develop an experimental demonstrator to prove the all year-round functionality and efficiency of the concept building adaptive solar energy system, for passive air heating and food drying purposes.

The adaptive solar system will lead to two main objectives: Providing the pre-heated building and greenhouse fresh air during the cold period and providing heated air for drying process of the crop resulted from local urban farming during the warm period. The system will involve envelope elements which can be placed at the exterior of any building, especially large, ready to renovate buildings, which will be connected to the fresh air ventilation system and the integrated drying system.

This novel building integrated solar dryer can be hosted by urban farms located on multi-residential building rooftops owned by the residents of the condominium or by urban farms located on industrial building such as supermarkets. For each application the solar dryer is used for heating building spaces during cold period and for urban farm drying needs during warmer period.

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