Experimental Analysis of Drying Green Leaves in a Novel Food Drying Chamber Coupled to Latent Thermal energy storage Tank Charged by a Diesel Engine Exhaust

Abstract

Drying agricultural products is an essential part of food to preserve the seasonal food and leaves by extracting the moisture and providing heat. Drying agricultural products in open air is one of the most prominent methods. However, there are few demerits when agricultural products are dried by open air drying. Drying them in a closed drying chamber has advantages such as controlled drying, contamination issues etc. In the present work an attempt is made to dry Moringa leaves by drying them with the help of hot air which is supplied by an electrical blower. Hot air is provided to the drying chamber by heating the atmospheric air with the help of availing waste heat stored in a latent heat storage (LHTES) tank which is integrated with a single cylinder, four stroke, and stationary diesel engine. The LHTES tank is charged by the exhaust gas for a specific period of time by melting Paraffin wax at almost 60⁰ C. The maximum heat stored inside the LHTEs tank is estimated to be around 20.39 MJ/h Performance of the drying chamber (DC) integrated with the LHTES tank is simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using ANSYS Fluent and the results are compared with the experimental data Further moisture removal characteristics and drying behaviour of Moringa leaves are evaluated.