Drying process within a porous solid has two drying periods: a constant rate drying period during which free water content is removed and a falling rate drying period which occurs due to the capillary action and it is a complex process of simultaneous transfer of heat and mass. Simultaneous transfer of heat and mass through porous solids plays crucial roles in chemistry, drying, food processing, etc.
Numerical analysis of drying process of a porous solid is highly challenging because it involves different scaling parameters.
Most works commonly used a standard correlation to compute heat and mass transfer coefficients at the interface of products for numerical analysis of convective drying.
Jon Chol Jin, a researcher at the Faculty of Heat Engineering, has proposed a method for numerical simulation on the convective drying of moist clay-tiles for moderate Reynolds numbers.
He applied the energy equation and moisture transport equation based on Whitaker’s theory of drying for moist clay-tiles, and solved the Navier-Stokes equations, vapor diffusion equations, thermal diffusion equations, continuity equations and turbulence equations for the flow field of fluid.
He accomplished innovative connection between the turbulent flow of the air and moist clay-tiles by setting the boundary conditions for the continuity of state variables and their respective fluxes through the interface.
He simulated drying of the clay-tile under different operation conditions using ANSYS Fluent Computational Fluid Dynamics code. Then, he analyzed the effects of velocity, temperature and relative humidity of air on the temperature and moisture content within the clay-tile during the drying process.
His numerical simulation method can be used to analyze convective drying processes of moving porous solids and that of porous solid combined with ultrasonic wave and microwave.
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