Development of FE modeling for hybrid greenhouse dryer for potato chips drying.

In this communication, a combination of heat and mass transfer model was developed using finite element (FE) model to explain the drying performance of the hybrid greenhouse dryer for potato chips. The hybrid greenhouse dryer is integrated with a single-pass solar air heater (SAH). A partial differential equation for a combined set of heat and mass transfer was numerically solved by the FE method. In order to see the spatial moisture distribution within the potato sample, a 3-dimensional FE model was created, and moisture removal takes place from the surface during drying of the products. Lagrange triangle FEs of extremely small size and second-order geometry shape were employed for meshing the geometry of model. Time-dependent study was express the fluctuation in time interval of 0-5 h. The developed model showed the maximum crop and ground temperature are 67.1 and 79.1°C, respectively. Moisture ratio in dry basis is reduced from 1 to 0.005 in 03 h and remains constant at 0.005. Thus, average moisture ratio in dry basis was found as 0.18902. Drying efficiency for the hybrid greenhouse dryer found to be 20.52%, whereas thermal efficiency for SAH was found 54.53%. Relative humidity inside the drying chamber found to be 26.50% in hybrid greenhouse dryer. The predicted versus the experimental results observed that hybrid greenhouse dryer having moderate inside temperature is suitable for crop drying as well as ith sustaining the environmental balance, hybrid greenhouse proves to be most effective.