Improvement of air distribution inside the greenhouse solar dryer using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

In this work, a series of configurations of fans inside a greenhouse solar dryer (GSD) is analyzed and simulated, in order to increase the air velocity and temperature. The simulation was carried out in steady-state using CFD Ansys Fluent commercial codes 19.0. The results showed that the use of the fan inside the greenhouse can improve the distribution of air, since in the optimal design, a maximum velocity of 3.3 m/s and a temperature of 318 K were reached compared to the greenhouse without recirculation, where the maximum air velocity and temperature were 0.6 m/s and 316 K, respectively.