Temperature distribution analysis in the thermal absorber of an indirect solar dryer
International Journal of Development Research
Temperature distribution analysis in the thermal absorber of an indirect solar dryer
Received 14th August, 2021; Received in revised form 26th September, 2021; Accepted 11th October, 2021; Published online 30th November, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Brenda Fernandes Ribeiro and Antonio Gomes Nunes. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article proposes a mathematical modeling for the temperature distribution along a surface. The model was developed based on the Fourier’s law of heat conduction and tested on empirical data obtained in 9 days of experiments performed on an indirect exposure solar dryer at UFCG (Campina Grande, PB, Brazil). The initial condition was considered position-dependent and the boundary conditions were considered position and time-dependent, as well as the heat generation equation added to the model to include the effects of solar irradiation. The application of Fourier’s law of conduction resulted in a non-homogeneous partial differential equation, which was solved using the eigenfunction expansion method. The comparison between 27 experimental data and the equivalent data obtained through the model revealed an average percentage error of 2.17% for all temperature data given in Kelvin.
