Use of the CFD Tool to Analyze the Aeration Comportment in a Horizontal Silo

Abstract

Storage in vertical and horizontal silos is commonly used worldwide, and its better understanding is essential to acquire and maintain product quality of the stored products.Environmental temperature inside the silos is the main factor that drives mass loss, grain biological activity, pest development and product respiration. Thus, the study of temperature behavior at several layers of the product throughout time is necessary to diminish loss and achieve higher storage time with minimum quality loss, profit, and yield. Aeration is a formidable tool that allow the maintenance of temperature and consequently becomes an important preventive method to avoid the problems stated before. Direct measurement of temperature in all directions inside the silo requires numerous expensive equipment and labor force and requires a large amount of time to provide valuable and trusty data. For these reasons, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) was utilized to solve this problem. CFX software satisfactory demonstrated velocity behavior within the horizontal silo containing wheat; however, the aeration ducts configuration did not offered support to the correct silo aeration.