Simulation of a solar assisted counterflow tunnel dehydrator

Abstract

A widely used class of vegetable dehydration systems are the “tunnel-and-truck” dehydrators, where the prepared material lies over horizontal trays stored in trucks which move discontinuously in opposite direction of the air flow. This way the driest product is facing the inlet hot and dry air blowed to the system. When product of one truck is ready, is removed from the tunnel leaving space for advance the remaining truck one place forward. This way, a new truck full of wet product can be inserted at the end of the tunnel. The hermal energy required for the process can be supplied by several sources including gas, biomass, solar energy or a combination of them. Solar energy is for free but reaches the Earth with quite a low flux and a strongly fluctuating rate. This imposes the need of special designs and control strategies. This paper presents a study based on simulation models of the dehydrator and the solar thermal system. The dehydrator simulation model is tuned to match experimental data from a particular prototype based on fossil fuel. A solar system simulation model is then applied to the analysis of different design options.