Energy and exergy analyses of convective drying of green bell pepper in a cabinet tray dryer

Abstract

This paper presents CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) in the drying process of green bell pepper in a cabinet tray dryer using three drying temperatures (50, 55 and 60 ^°C). Engineering simulation software ANSYS 14.5 was used to simulate the model of the dryer in 2D (2 Dimensional). The ANSYS Design Modeler modeled the 2D representation of the dryer and ANSYS ICEM was used for mesh analysis. Thereafter, the derived data from the simulation was used in the calculation of the energy and exergy analyses of the dryer based on the thermal efficiency with respect to the varied drying temperatures in order to assess the performance of the system in terms of energy utilization (EU), energy utilization ratio (EUR), energy efficiency, exergy inflow and outflow, exergy loss and exergetic efficiency. The results indicated that energy utilization and energy utilization ratio decreased from 0.02401 to 0.01975 J/s and 0.01441 to 0.00299 respectively as the drying air temperature increased from 50 to 60 ^°C. Energy efficiency decreased from 1.96 to 1.15%. Exergetic efficiency increased with increase in drying air temperature from 1.44 to 2.51%. Model equations that could be used to express the energy and exergy parameters as a function of drying temperature were established from this study.