Abstract
A numerical study (conjugate modeling) of potato cuboid separation in convective drying is performed with the Large Eddy Simulation approach. Any in-line potato array is represented by a single interacted zone through periodic boundary conditions. Numerical code is validated with four experimental studies focused on hydrodynamics (two cases), heat transfer (one case), and mass transfer (one case). Twelve case studies have been proposed to study the effect of streamwise and spanwise distances on heat and mass transfer. Results show that low streamwise separations (0.25) strongly affect the potato drying by the presence of a quasi-stationary wake that causes a blocking effect. The potato cuboid’s best thermal uniformity and mass transfer are presented at a spanwise distance (0.75) and streamwise separations (1.0). Results can be applied to get uniform heat and mass transfer in drying chambers.
Acknowledgments
We appreciate the support given to this research by Instituto de Ingeniería of UNAM. Computation was carried out at the Tonatiuh-Cluster (Instituto de Ingeniería, UNAM). The authors thank Fernando Maldonado, the Tonatiuh-Cluster manager, and his team, ASUL. Also, the authors appreciate the financial support provided by the National Autonomous University of Mexico, DGAPA-PAPIIT TA100117, and grants provided by the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACYT).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.