A CFD-DEM simulation of food grain drying process in a fluidised bed

Drying is the most important step for post-harvest processing of food grains. This project developed a food grain drying model by combining computational fluid dynamics and discrete element method in a fluidised bed. The model incorporated heat transfer sub-models, a water evaporation sub-model in resemblance to a chemical reaction and a shrinkage sub-model. The model is first tested against experimental data from literature in terms of drying and volume shrinkage curves. Then the effects of operating parameters, grain properties and bed geometries on drying and shrinkage rates and dried product quality are quantified and discussed with the grain scale information.