Computational Fluid Dynamics Modelling of the Heat Pump Drying of Banana: Preliminary Studies

The distribution of local temperature, moisture and velocity gradients obtained in CFD calculations can be used to develop models for predicting the parameters in a drying process. This article reports a preliminary result on the efforts to characterizing the performance of a heat pump dryer using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). A three dimensional, pressure based, transient, laminar, incompressible model of heat pump drying of banana slices using Ansys 14.5 (15), a CFD package- FLUENT was investigated. Turbulent cases were also examined. The geometry was considered as elemental volume with symmetrical walls while the banana slices were designed as solids with pores containing a mixture of water and air. Parameters/variable/geometry investigated include velocity, moisture and temperature distribution of the air within the dryer and of the banana slices. The result of the numerical simulation was validated with experimental results from a heat pump dryer and there were agreements. The model is successful in predicting the temperature profile and mass fraction of moisture. Keywords— Ansys, Banana, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Contour plots, Drying, Velocity and temperature distribution