Moisture transfer modeling during solar drying of potato cylinders considering shrinkage

In the present work, the thin layer drying kinetics of potato during natural convection solar drying was investigated experimentally. Cylindrical potato samples with length 50 mm and varying diameter of 8, 10 and 13 mm were dried in an in-house designed and fabricated laboratory scale mixed-mode solar dryer. Thirteen different thin-layer mathematical models were fitted to the experimental moisture ratio (MR) data. The obtained results indicated that the Modified Page model could satisfactorily describe the drying curve of potato cylinders with higher value of R² and lower values of RMSE and χ². The shrinkage parameter is incorporated in the analytical diffusion model to study the moisture transfer mechanism of potato cylinders. It was observed that the values of effective diffusion coefficient (D_eff) and convective mass transfer coefficient (h_m) are overestimated in the range of 85.02–90.27% and 39.11–45.11% for the range of sample diameter examined, without considering the shrinkage effect in the mass transfer analysis. A Multiphysics approach was adopted in this study to get insight into the drying behavior of potato cylinders in terms of food-moisture interactions during the solar drying process. The predicted results of MR are in close agreement with the experimental data. Moreover, the anisotropic behavior of shrinkage as well as the moisture distribution inside the potato cylinder was very well described by Multiphysics model.     

回采工作面及采空区瓦斯运移的数学模型及数值模拟研究

为更真实可靠地还原回采工作面及采空区内流场和瓦斯场的分布特征,基于回采工作面和采空区不同的介质属性,并考虑瓦斯扩散能力的差异,建立了各自的强耦合多物理场数学模型,并给出了瓦斯涌出所满足的质量通量边界条件。采用COMSOL Multiphysics构建了强耦合的自由和多孔介质流动以及自由和多孔介质稀物质传递等物理场,以龙煤矿业集团股份有限公司双鸭山分公司的东保卫井田二水平一采区36号煤-570左面为研究对象,研究了回采工作面及采空区稳态下的瓦斯运移特征。结果表明:采空区浅部瓦斯体积分数较小但梯度较大,且随着采空区向深部延伸,瓦斯体积分数的梯度逐渐降低,但其数值逐渐增大并趋于稳定;另外,采空区内实测的瓦斯体积分数分布与数值模拟结果具有较好的一致性,验证了建立的回采工作面及采空区瓦斯运移的数学模型和数值模型的可靠性和准确性。