1987 Volume 49 Issue 3 Pages 225-234
A mathematical model was presented to simulate the drying process of the solar drying system which comprises a drying house and a circulating dryer. A heat collection model, which forms a part of the above-mentioned mathematical model, corresponds to the drying house in which a black vinyl sheet was spread to improve the solar collection capacity.
The temperatures of a drying house wall, a black vinyl sheet, soil and inside air were predicted with the model and those values were qualitatively in accordance with the ones obtained from the experiments.
For the prediction of black vinyl sheet temperatures in particular, both the Finite Element Method and the Boundary Element Method were applied to a two dimensional and steady-state heat conduction problem. The results showed that the former is valid for materials which are in the very small ratio of thickness to width like a black vinyl sheet.
As to a cirulating drying model which is a modified deep bed drying model, the predicted values obtained under some assumptions agreed well to the experimental ones, which indicated the validity of the model.
