Modeling effectiveness analysis of momentum and heat transfer in a fixed bed silo-dryer through computational fluid-dynamics

Abstract

The drying procedure is of great use in the industry, being capable of increasing the shelf life of many products, in addition to facilitate its transport and storage. The operation is essential for coffee beans to remove their excessive moisture content. The silo-drier has potential to ensure sensorial qualities through the intermittent drying, as well as with optimizations in the energy consumption. The objective of this work was to study the optimization of the numeric representation of a silo-dryer system, comparing the results of three different models available in the software FLUENT® 19.2: Eulerian Multi phase Model for Granular flow with packed bed configuration disabled, the same model but with the packed bed configuration enabled, and the porous zone single-phase modelling. The convergence efficiency of these models was also analyzed through the results of the numeric residue, and the influence of the relaxation factor in the simulation results. The behavior of solid volumetric fraction, air velocity and bed temperature were qualitatively examined with hot air at the inlet. It was found that the momentum relaxation factor influenced the results. Moderately lower factors allowed for faster convergence without significant particle behavior change. Monitoring the mass residue, the enabled packed bed modelling presented lower residuals, while the porous zone modelling presented higher residuals. The packed bed and porous zone modelling reported lower air velocities in comparison to the disabled packed bed modelling, and presented satisfactory heat transfer through the temperature profiles.