Dehydration characteristics and mathematical modelling of lemon slices drying undergoing oven treatment

In this study, the effect of drying temperature on drying behaviour and mass transfer parameters of lemon slices was investigated. The drying experiments were conducted in a laboratory air ventilated oven dryer at temperatures of 50, 60 and 75 °C. It was observed that the drying temperature affected the drying time and drying rate significantly. Drying rate curves revealed that the process at the temperature levels taken place in the falling rate period entirely. The usefulness of eight thin layer models to simulate the drying kinetics was evaluated and the Midilli and Kucuk model showed the best fit to experimental drying curves. The effective moisture diffusivity was determined on the basis of Fick’s second law and obtained to be 1.62 × 10^?11, 3.25 × 10^?11 and 8.11 × 10^?11 m² s^?1 for the temperatures of 50, 60 and 75 °C, respectively. The activation energy and Arrhenius constant were calculated to be 60.08 kJ mol^?1 and 0.08511 m² s^?1, respectively. The average value of convective mass transfer coefficient for the drying temperatures of 50, 60 and 75 °C was calculated to be 5.71 × 10^?7, 1.62 × 10^?6 and 2.53 × 10^?6 m s^?1, respectively.     

Investigation on rough rice drying kinetics at various thin layers of a deep bed

Moisture content gradients along the bed column are commonly neglected during simulation of deep-bed grain drying. In this study, rough rice drying kinetics at various thin layers of a deep bed was investigated. The experiments were conducted under different drying conditions and the data were compared with the values predicted by a previously developed non-equilibrium model for numerical simulation of grain drying. The moisture content gradients related to the rough rice column indicated that the higher the drying layer, the more was the moisture content at each drying time. The constant drying rate period was observed neither for any thin layers nor for the entire drying column. The drying rate of the lower layers continuously decreased with drying time, whereas that of the upper layers firstly increased and then decreased. The implemented model predicted drying process with a high accuracy at various layers. However, the values of maximum relative error (RE _max ) and mean relative error (MRE) increased as the air temperature increased, and reversely decreased with the air velocity. The higher values of MRE and RE _max were related to the layer 1 (0–5 cm bed height) at temperature of 60 °C and air velocity of 0.4 m s^?1, and the lower values belonged to the layer 4 (15–20 cm bed height) at temperature of 40 °C and air velocity of 0.9 m s^?1.     

Design of an experimental set up for convective drying: experimental studies at different drying temperature

An experimental setup is designed to investigate the convective drying of moist object experimentally. All the design data, components of setup, materials and specifications are presented. Transient moisture content of a rectangular shaped potato slice (4 × 2 × 2 cm) is measured at different air temperatures of 40, 50, 60 and 70 °C with an air velocity of 2 m/s. Two different drying rate periods are observed. Results are compared with available results from literature.     

Drying characteristics of garlic (Allium sativum L) slices in a convective hot air dryer

The effects of drying temperatures on the drying kinetics of garlic slices were investigated using a cabinet-type dryer. The experimental drying data were fitted best to the Page and Modified Page models apart from other theoretical models to predict the drying kinetics. The effective moisture diffusivities varied from 4.214 × 10^?10 to 2.221 × 10^?10 m² s^?1 over the temperature range studied, and activation energy was 30.582 kJ mol^?1.     

Heat and mass transfer studies in a batch fluidized bed dryer using Geldart group D particles

The drying behavior at low temperatures has been studied with four different uniformly sized particles and three different binary mixtures at different dilutions ranging from 10 to 40 % with an interval of 10 % varying parameters such as air velocity, initial moisture content, initial bed height and temperature. Falling rate period one and two were observed and correlations were developed to predict the drying rate in falling rate periods one and two. Correlations were also developed to predict the average moisture content by considering the effect of various parameters for uniformly sized particles and binary mixture of solids. The heat and mass transfer coefficients have been found for different conditions and compared. Comparison of experimental and predicted average moisture contents for uniformly sized particles and for various binary mixtures has been made and the predicted average moisture content has been found to be in good agreement with experimental average moisture content.     

The effect of temperature and slice thickness on drying kinetics tomato in the infrared dryer

In this study thin layer drying of tomato slices were investigated in the infrared dryer. Drying rate increased with increasing temperature and reduction thickness and thus reduced the drying time. The effective diffusivity increased with increasing temperature and with increasing thickness of the samples. The effective diffusivity values changed from 1.094 × 10^?9 to 4.468 × 10^?9 m²/s and for activation energy varied from 110 to 120 kJ/mol. The best model for drying process of tomato slices was Midilli model.     

Hot-air drying of purslane (Portulaca oleracea L.)

Drying characteristics of purslane was experimentally studied in a cabinet dryer. The experimental drying data were fitted best to Modified Henderson and Pabis and Midilli et al. models apart from other models to predict the drying kinetics. The effective moisture diffusivity varied from 1.12 × 10^?9 to 3.60 × 10^?9 m²/s over the temperature range studied and activation energy was 53.65 kJ/mol.     

Thin-layer drying of tomato (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Lycopersicum esculentum Mill. cv. Rio Grande</Emphasis>) slices in a convective hot air dryer

The effects of different drying temperatures on the drying kinetics of tomato slices were investigated using a cabinet-type dryer. The experimental drying data were fitted best to the to the Page and Modified Page models apart from other theoretical models to predict the drying kinetics. The effective moisture diffusivities varied from 1.015 × 10⁻⁹ to 2.650 × 10⁻⁹ m² s⁻¹over the temperature range studied, and activation energy was 22.981 kJ mol⁻¹.     

Drying of solids with irregular geometry: numerical study and application using a three-dimensional model

This article proposes a numerical solution for the diffusion equation applied to solids with arbitrary geometry using non-orthogonal structured grids for the boundary condition of the first kind. A transient three-dimensional mathematical formulation written in boundary fitted coordinates and numerical formalism to discretize the diffusion equation by using the finite volume method, including numerical analysis of the computational solution are presented. To validate the proposed solution, the results obtained in this work were compared with well-known numerical solution available in literature and good agreement was observed. In order to verify the potential of the proposed numerical solution, it was applied to describe mass transfer inside ceramic roof tiles during drying. For that, it was used experimental data of the drying kinetics at the following temperatures: 55.6; 69.7; 82.7 and 98.6 °C. An optimization technique using experimental dataset has been presented to estimation of transport properties. The obtained statistical indicators enable to conclude that the numerical solution satisfactorily describes the drying processes.     

Effects of the mass and volume shrinkage of ground chip and pellet particles on drying rates

The effects of varying the mass and volume of ground chip and pellet particles on the particle drying rate were analyzed. Samples of whole pellets and chips were hammer milled using a 3.2 mm screen and the ground chip and pellet particles were found to have similar size distributions, although the pellet particles were denser and more spherical than the chip particles. Prior to drying, water was added to the particles to obtain 0.10, 0.30, 0.50, 0.70, and 0.90 moisture contents (on a dry mass basis). The moistened particles were subsequently dried in a constant temperature thin layer dryer set at 50, 100, 150, or 200 °C under dry pure nitrogen, dry compressed air, or atmospheric air. The chip and pellet particles exhibited similar degrees of shrinkage, but the pellet particles underwent a greater reduction in their bulk volume during drying. It appears that the more spherical pellet particles are prone to shrinkage in more than one direction, whereas the needle-like chip particle shrink only in one direction. A variable radius first order drying model was found to fit the experimental data better than a fixed radius model.     

Heat transfer from a flat surface to an inclined impinging jet

An experimental study was carried out to investigate the effect of the inclination jet on convection heat transfer to horizontal flat plate. Local heat transfer determined as a function is of three parameters including inclination angle of the air jet relative to the plate in range of 90° ≤ θ ≤ 45°, jet-to-plate spacing in range of 2 ≤ L/D ≤ 8 and Reynolds number in range of 1,500 ≤ Re ≤ 30,000. The results show that the maximum heat transfer point moves towards the uphill side of the plate and the maximum heat transfer decreases as the inclination angle decreases. The correlations were conducted to predict maximum and local Nusselt number as a function of Re, θ, L/D, and x/D for a specific three regions.     

Heat transfer performance comparison of steam and air in gas turbine cooling channels with different rib angles

Using steam as working fluid to replace compressed air is a promising cooling technology for internal cooling passages of blades and vanes. The local heat transfer characteristics and the thermal performance of steam flow in wide aspect ratio channels (W/H = 2) with different angled ribs on two opposite walls have been experimentally investigated in this paper. The averaged Nusselt number ratios and the friction factor ratios of steam and air in four ribbed channels were also measured under the same test conditions for comparison. The Reynolds number range is 6,000–70,000. The rib angles are 90°, 60°, 45°, and 30°, respectively. The rib height to hydraulic diameter ratio is 0.047. The pitch-to-rib height ratio is 10. The results show that the Nusselt number ratios of steam are 1.19–1.32 times greater than those of air over the range of Reynolds numbers studied. For wide aspect ratio channels using steam as the coolant, the 60° angled ribs has the best heat transfer performance and is recommended for cooling design.     

Analysis of the Mechanism of Counter-current Spray Drying

Results of experimental investigations of the effect of drying and atomization parameters on counter-current spray drying are discussed. Based on 96 experimental tests, the local and global distributions of velocity, temperature, drying air humidity and moisture content of material dried in the drying tower were determined. Analysis of the results showed that the process of agglomeration during counter-current spray drying depended mainly on air temperature in the atomization zone.     

Numerical simulation of an innovated building cooling system with combination of solar chimney and water spraying system

In this study, passive cooling of a room using a solar chimney and water spraying system in the room inlet vents is simulated numerically in Yazd, Iran (a hot and arid city with very high solar radiation). The performance of this system has been investigated for the warmest day of the year (5 August) which depends on the variation of some parameters such as water flow rate, solar heat flux, and inlet air temperature. In order to get the best performance of the system for maximum air change and also absorb the highest solar heat flux by the absorber in the warmest time of the day, different directions (West, East, North and South) have been studied and the West direction has been selected as the best direction. The minimum amount of water used in spraying system to set the inside air averaged relative humidity <65 % is obtained using trial and error method. The simulation results show that this proposed system decreases the averaged air temperature in the middle of the room by 9–14 °C and increases the room relative humidity about 28–45 %.     

Thin-layer drying characteristics of sweet potato slices and mathematical modelling

The effect of blanching and drying temperature (50, 60 and 70°C) on drying kinetics and rehydration ratio of sweet potatoes was investigated. It was observed that both the drying temperature and blanching affected the drying time and rehydration ratio. The logarithmic model showed the best fit to experimental drying data. The values of effective moisture diffusivity and activation energy ranged from 9.32 × 10⁻¹¹ to 1.75 × 10⁻¹⁰ m²/s, and 22.7–23.2 kJ/mol, respectively.     

Numerical computation of natural convection in an isosceles triangular cavity with a partially active base and filled with a Cu–water nanofluid

This paper discusses the results of a study related to natural convection cooling of a heat source located on the bottom wall of an inclined isosceles triangular enclosure filled with a Cu water-nanofluid. The right and left walls of the enclosure are both maintained cold at constant equal temperatures, while the remaining parts of the bottom wall are insulated. The study has been carried out for a Rayleigh number in the range 10⁴ ≤ Ra ≤ 10⁶, for a heat source length in the range 0.2 ≤ ε ≤0.8, for a solid volume fraction in the range 0 ≤ ?≤0.06 and for an inclination angle in the range 0° ≤ δ≤45°. Results are presented in the form of streamline contours, isotherms, maximum temperature at the heat source surface and average Nusselt number. It is noticed that the addition of Cu nanoparticles enhances the heat transfer rate and therefore cooling effectiveness for all values of Rayleigh number, especially at low values of Ra. The effect of the inclination angle becomes more noticeable as one increases the value of Ra. For high Rayleigh numbers, a critical value for the inclination angle of δ = 15° is found for which the heat source maximum temperature is highest.     

Heat transfer characteristics of staggered wing-shaped tubes bundle at different angles of attack

An experimental and numerical study has been conducted to clarify heat transfer characteristics and effectiveness of a cross-flow heat exchanger employing staggered wing-shaped tubes at different angels of attack. The water-side Re_w and the air-side Re_a were at 5 × 10² and at from 1.8 × 10³ to 9.7 × 10³, respectively. The tubes arrangements were employed with various angles of attack θ_1,2,3 from 0° to 330° at the considered Re_a range. Correlation of Nu, St, as well as the heat transfer per unit pumping power (ε) in terms of Re_a and design parameters for the studied bundle were presented. The temperature fields around the staggered wing-shaped tubes bundle were predicted by using commercial CFD FLUENT 6.3.26 software package. Results indicated that the heat transfer increased with the angle of attack in the range from 0° to 45°, while the opposite was true for angles of attack from 135° to 180°. The best thermal performance and hence the efficiency η of studied bundle occurred at the lowest Re_a and/or zero angle of attack. Comparisons between the experimental and numerical results of the present study and those, previously, obtained for similar available studies showed good agreements.     

Prediction of thermal gradient in an air channel with presence of electrostatic field using artificial neural network

Free convection from cubical air channel equipped with copper plate was taken into consideration in the presence of electrostatic field as the channel position was varied. The paper examines the artificial neural network capability in modeling and prediction of five output parameters for plate temperatures as affected with four input parameters of heat flux, applied voltage, the inclination angle of channel, and inlet ambient temperature. The proposed network’s performance was measured with increasing number of neurons in hidden layer. The best network structure was found 4-20-5 with Levenberg–Marquardt training algorithm and mean squared error of 0.06366. The mean relative error for all output cases were <2.9 %. The best coefficient of determination was resulted at 30 cm from channel entrance section to the amount of 0.9807. The discrepancies of the results are chiefly attributed to 90° channel inclination angle. The network was able to predict accurately temperature trend of airflow and plate with voltage, heat flux, and channel positions.     

Experimental study to obtain the viscosity of CuO-loaded nanofluid: effects of nanoparticles’ mass fraction,temperature and basefluid’s types to develop a correlation

In this study, the impacts of temperature, nanoparticles mass fraction, and basefluid types were investigated on the dynamic viscosity of CuO-loaded nanofluids. The nanoparticles were dispersed in deionized water, ethanol, and ethylene glycol as basefluids separately and the measurements were performed on samples with nanoparticles loads ranging from 0.005 to 5 wt%, and the temperature range of 25 to 70 °C. TEM analysis were performed on dried nanoparticles and the results showed the average mean diameter of CuO nanoparticles ranged from 10 to 50 nm. The results of DLS analysis confirmed the results of nanoparticles size obtained by TEM analysis in mentioned basefluids and Zeta-Potential tests exhibited the high stability of the nanoparticles in the basefluids environment. The results indicate that by adding tiny amount of CuO nanoparticles to basefluids, relative viscosity of nanofluid increases. By the increase in nanoparticles load higher than 0.1 wt% the effect of both nanoparticles mass fraction and temperature would be more tangible, while for nanoparticles mass fraction lower than 0.1 wt% no significant change in viscosity was observed. In addition, the results declare that viscosity of nanofluid remains constant at various applied shear rates indicating Newtonian behavior of nanofluid at various nanoparticles load and temperature. According to experimental data, it is also evident that with the increase in temperature, the value of relative dynamic viscosity decreases significantly. Also it is concluded that for CuO/ethanol nanofluid, more interfacial interaction is resulted that causes higher relative dynamic viscosity while for CuO/water lower interfacial interaction between nanoparticles surface and water molecules are resulted which leads to the lower values for this parameter. The results of this study implied that with increase the temperature from 25 to 70 °C at the condition where nanoparticles mass fraction was chosen to be 5 wt%, the value of dynamic viscosity of CuO/ethanol, CuO/deionized water, CuO/ethylene glycol declined 69%, 66%, and 65% respectively. Finally, a correlation was proposed for the relative dynamic viscosity of nanofluid based on the CuO nanoparticles mass fraction and temperature of the basefluid and nanoparticles.