Abstract:
Meat and other food items can be dried to preserve it for a longer time. Indirect solar dryers are
ideal dryers for meat as it is cost-effective and easy to manufacture. Moreover, higher-quality
dried meat is produced compared to traditional methods. However, FPSAH should be optimized
to be efficiently used for meat drying. The aim of this study is to analyze the performance of a solar
meat dryer by incorporating curved obstacles on the back plate of the solar air heater duct.
In this study, solar meat dryer with a capacity to process approximately 25 kg of meat was
considered in the analysis. The performance of the solar air heater was studied through CFD by
incorporating various number of curved obstacles (i.e., 4, 6, and 8) using ANSYS FLUENT. Five
different mass flow rates ranging from 0.03625 -0.0072 kg/s were considered as boundary
conditions at the inlet of the solar air heater duct for all cases, with a fixed inlet temperature of
302K. Mean collector temperature corresponding with the respective mass flow rates were applied
as boundary conditions for the collector. Optimal exit air temperature of 333K which gives 328K
in the drying chamber was achieved in the solar air heater duct with 6 obstacles at mass flow rate
of 0.03625kg/s. The thermal efficiency of the solar air heater channel with 6 obstacles was 10.8%
higher than that of the channel without obstacles. Moreover, the highest thermal efficiency of
82.97% was achieved at a mass flow rate of 0.0725 kg/s in the duct with 8 obstacles. The thermal
efficiency of the duct with 8 obstacles was 24.1% higher than that of the smooth one at the highest
mass flow rate. Significant pressure loss was observed at the duct with 8 obstacles at mass flow
rate of 0.0725kg/s which was 20 pa greater than that of duct without obstacles, which increased
the fan power by 0.82 watt.
