An Experimental Analysis of a Solar Greenhouse Drier: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Validation

Abstract

This article presents the experimental and numerical analysis of a natural convection solar greenhouse drier. A simple experiment is carried out and noted on a solar greenhouse drier at no load condition to measure the temperatures at different points. A solar greenhouse drier model is developed in the preprocessor GAMBIT and analyzed using the Fluent 6.3.26 package. Experimental results are validated by widely used computational fluid dynamics software Fluent 6.3.26. The incident solar radiation and temperature profiles obtained from both studies are analyzed carefully, and at last further suggestions for improvement are provided for effective temperature distribution, which is one of the factors deciding the efficiency of the solar greenhouse drier. The results are found to be satisfactory with an error rate below 20%.

Keywords:

• biomass heater
• computational fluid dynamics
• Fluent 6.3
• greenhouse drier