CFD analysis for greenhouse effect solar dryer

Greenhouse Effect (GHE) solar dryer is a transparent wall structure, consists of absorber plate as solar heat collector, product holders (tray or batch) and fans to discharge moisture from the product. GHE solar dryer is one of the alternative dryer for the farmer and merchants to improve the quality of dried products. Direct sun drying is still popular choice by farmers because it is cheap and simple. However, the method is greatly dependent on the existence of solar irradiation and the product is contaminated very easily by pollution and dirt. The general constraint in designing artificial dryer is the problem of non-uniformity of final moisture content of product, especially for the cabinet of rack type dryer. This condition can be solved by providing uniform distribution of temperature, relative humidity (RH) and airflow velocity of the drying air. Therefore, in this study, such problem was approached by conducting flow simulation within the drying structure by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology to determine the proper position of drying air inlet and outlet, location and capacity of the heat exchanger unit, the position and the capacity of the fan, to produce uniform distribution of the drying air temperature, RH and airflow velocity within the drying chamber.(Author)