At a local products exhibition organized by the Palestine Agricultural Development Association in the Gaza Strip in January, Hanadi Abu Harbid, 23, stood at her own stand, rejoicing at the reaction of visitors to her products.

One of them tasted a piece of dried persimmon that put a smile on his face. “Honestly, it tastes better than the fresh fruit,” he told Abu Harbid.

This delicacy is one of the many agricultural products Abu Harbid, a graduate of the Department of Renewable Energy Engineering at Al-Azhar University - Gaza, was able to produce as part of her solar food dehydrator project she called “Solar Food.” Her main objective was to find a practical and realistic solution for drying food products.

The idea of the project, which is the first of its kind in Palestine, is to dry agricultural foods such as fruits, vegetables and herbs with solar energy, using a hybrid air solar heater that combines two systems to collect energy sources. The first system is an air solar collector and the second system is a heat pump to fully raise the efficiency of the device and reduce energy consumption.