Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2016
16th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Numerical Analysis of an Indirect Solar Dryer
Submission Author:
Vicente Luiz Scalon , SP
Co-Authors:
Leonardo Souza Campos, Geraldo Luiz Palma
Presenter: Leonardo Souza Campos
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2016.CIT2016-0295
Abstract
Food production and preservation is one of the main big scale World’s issues due to the increasingly world population over the decades. Considering that approximately 25% of the food production is lost from its production/harvest to the consumer, the preservation is one of the most important factors to be optimized in order to guarantee an increase in the productivity and reduction of costs. Moreover, it is the only feasible way to reduce considerably food losses, and among the most widely used preservation processes, drying must be highlighted as one of the oldest and most effective ways to detain deterioration by reducing the moisture of the product. The most used process of drying is the direct natural solar drying, due to the simplicity and to the low costs involving the process. However, it presents several disadvantages, such as the difficulty to control the process and the contamination by dust and microbial organisms. Some alternatives for this method are the indirect solar drying and artificial drying, being the artificial process not feasible for low investment and small scale producers. The main purpose of the present work is the design of a low cost indirect solar dryer with no artificial energy source. In this system, the mass is restrained inside a closed chamber, avoiding ambient contamination. A flat plate with high absorptivity is insulated and the high temperatures induces an air flow inwards the system due to the reduction of pressure and to the buoyancy forces. The drying process is based on the natural convection between the heated air and the product positioned inside the drying chamber. A numerical analysis of the dryer is carried using the finite volume method in order to analyse the behavior of the air flow inside the drying chamber and the positions for optimal mass drying.
Keywords
Solar Energy, solar dryer, indirect solar drying, Finite Volumes, OpenFOAM, Solar Energy, solar dryer, indirect solar drying, Finite Volumes, OpenFOAM
