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Design of integrated air impingement blanching and drying equipment for grape and airflow uniformity analysis and optimization of its drying material room

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Abstract

The existing grape drying technology and equipment often have problems such as poor hygiene conditions, high drying costs, and large drug residues. Therefore, the market urgently needs grape drying equipment with low energy consumption, high efficiency, and a green-clean processing process. To solve the above problems, a piece of integrated drying equipment combining the two technologies of air impingement blanching and air impingement drying for multi-layer grape material drying is designed. The dried product quality is directly affected by the airflow field distribution. Therefore, obtaining good airflow distribution and airflow velocity uniformity in the drying chamber via parametric studies is essential to ensure uniform drying of products. Since parametric and optimization investigations by physical experiments are usually expensive and time-consuming, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) being a flexible and less expensive tool can be employed to perform such studies. In the current work, the airflow velocity distribution and uniformity of the drying material room are analyzed by Ansys Fluent software. The airflow velocity non-uniformity coefficient is used to evaluate airflow uniformity. Results show that the original design has poor uniformity and needs to be optimized. The influence of air inlet chamber deflection device and material truck airflow baffles on the flow field of the material drying room is investigated to improve the uniformity of airflow distribution. Considering drying efficiency and uniformity, drying material room structure with the addition of deflection device design with the structural parameters of L = 50 mm and θ = 76°, airflow baffle design with the structural parameters of h = 0 mm, θ2 = 20° is chosen as the final optimized design. After optimization, the velocity of airflow between material layers has improved overall, and the maximum difference of average airflow velocity between material layers has been reduced from 0.73 m/s to 0.69 m/s, improving the drying uniformity of dried materials. In comparison to other drying equipment, the current integrated drying equipment combing air impingement blanching and drying has the advantages of being efficient and energy-saving, suitable for large-scale drying of grapes with better drying quality. The current results could guide the drying equipment design for grapes and develop the grape drying industry with high-dried quality.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by Research and Application Demonstration of Key Technologies in Edible Fungus Industry such as Auricularia auricula-judae (No. 2021YFD1600403), Shaanxi University of Science and Technology Doctoral Research Startup Fund (No. BJ16-19), Shaanxi Provincial Department of Education Youth Innovation Team Research Program Project (No. 21JP016), Key project of International Science and Technology Cooperation Program for Shaanxi Province (No. 2020 KWZ-015), Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province (No. 2021NY-129).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi’an, Shaanxi, China

    Dong Wang, Libin Tan, Yuejin Yuan & Wenzhuo Chang

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  1. Dong Wang
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  2. Libin Tan
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  3. Yuejin Yuan
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  4. Wenzhuo Chang
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Correspondence to Libin Tan.

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Dong Wang is a lecturer in the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Province. He is specialized in CFD simulations and intelligent equipment design of agricultural products.

Libin Tan is a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Province. He is specialized in CFD simulations and heat and mass transfer in food drying process.

Yuejin Yuan is a Professor in the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Province. He is specialized in heat transfer and thermal engineering in food drying.

Wenzhuo Chang received his Master degree in the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Shaanxi Province. He is specialized in drying equipment design and CFD simulation of drying process.

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Wang, D., Tan, L., Yuan, Y. et al. Design of integrated air impingement blanching and drying equipment for grape and airflow uniformity analysis and optimization of its drying material room. J Mech Sci Technol 38, 2123–2142 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-024-0341-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-024-0341-4

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