Hydrodynamics investigation of pepper drying in a swirling fluidized bed dryer with multiple-group twisted tape swirl generators

The present work aims to investigation the behavior of drying peppers in a swirling fluidized bed dryer (S-FBD) fitted with multiple twisted tape swirl generators. A multiple-group twisted tape swirl generator was located at the air inlet at the bottom of the bed. The effects of the superficial air velocity (U*=U/Umf = 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2) on the moisture content (MC), moisture content ratio (MR) and drying rate (DR) were examined. The experimental results showed that the S-FBD can reduce the moisture content of peppers more rapidly than a conventional fluidized bed dryer (FBD). The S-FBD gave a higher DR and decreased drying time compared to that of a FBD. The results also indicated that operation at higher superficial air velocities resulted in a greater DR, especially at the beginning stage of the drying process. For the S-FBD, the reduced of MC, MR and DR at a high superficial air velocity (U*=U/Umf = 1.2) was better than at low superficial air velocities (U* = 1.0 and 1.1). Furthermore, five different drying models were evaluated to predict the performance of the S-FBD. Keywords: Drying, Swirl flow, Conventional fluidized bed dryer (FBD), Drying rate (DR), Swirling fluidized bed dryer (S-FBD), Peppe

Characterization of heat transfer and artificial neural networks prediction on overall performance index of a channel installed with arc-shaped baffle turbulators

Influences of baffle pitch ratio (p/w) and attached angle of arc-shaped baffles (AB) on the overall performance index (OPI) of a channel installed with AB have been carefully studied. In addition, an artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting the OPI of the channel was reported. The arc-shaped baffle (AB) showed a significant effect on the augmented heat transfer and friction loss penalty as compared to a smooth channel. As the attached arc shaped angle (θ) increased, both Nusselt number and friction factor intensified. The Nusselt number values at θ = 90° were higher than those at θ = 20°, 40°, 60°, and 80° by up to 5.8%, 3.9%, 2.3% and 2.5%, respectively. The Nusselt number increased when the p/w was raised from 4.0 to 8.0 while the opposite trend was observed when the p/w was raised from 8.0 to 12.0. The maximum OPI of 1.43 was achieved by using the baffles with θ = 90° and pitch ratio of 8.0 at Re = 4000. For the development of ANN models for predicting the OPI, it was found that the best predictive performance was (R2) of 0.99843407 for ANN model of 3-50-50-1 with Tanh-Tanh activation function at epoch of 1200