Transient and Spatial Energy and Exergy Analysis of Deep-bed Corn Drying A paper from the State-of-the-Art in Application of Finite Element Numerical Solutions to Engineering Problems: A Session Honoring Pioneering Contributions of Professor Kamyar Haghig

Abstract

This paper addresses the use of the first and second laws of thermodynamics to analyzing food and cereal grain drying processes, as a means to assure full sustainable compatibility between drying speed and energy source. Energy and exergy procedures are applied to the analysis of deep-bed grain drying, with a model consisting of four non-linear advection-dominated partial differential equations (PDE). The numerical solutions involved the use of the recent radial basis function (RBF) method, with excellent accuracy. The simulated results were compared against experimental available data for deep-bed corn grain drying, without loss of generality. A parametric study was carried on by spanning air temperature and interstitial velocity in the ranges of 30-70 oC and 0.2-0.6 m/s, respectively, and initial bulk grain moisture contents ranging from 0.25 to 0.33 db.The analyses were based on numerical time and spatial profiles for air and corn temperatures, bed moisture ratios, corn moisture content and first and second law efficiencies. Therefore, this work should be of value to dryer designers and for drying research objective.