Numerical Investigation and Performance Evaluation of Food Grain Drying Unit Integrated with the Thermal Energy Storage System.
Abstract
In this work, we propose the design and numerically investigate the thermal performance of a solar drying unit (SDU) integrated with thermal energy storage (TES) to facilitate the continuous drying of grains during off sunshine hours. Three Scheffler dishes of 16 m2, each delivering 4.06 kW of energy during the daytime, are utilized for drying and thermal energy storage purposes. The thermal energy storage (TES) of capacity 7.3 kW is designed to store 60% of thermal energy during the daytime, whereas the remaining is utilized for direct drying. The performance of SDU is investigated for different mass flow rates, and findings are reported. Under the results section